


Irruption

by morierblackleaf



Series: Induration [7]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mystery, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-04-25 01:34:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 55
Words: 340,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4941613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morierblackleaf/pseuds/morierblackleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part 7 of my "Induration" series, beginning a few weeks after the events of the epilogue in Part 6, "Amelioration."</p><p>Finally having the chance to enjoy themselves alone in the woods, Legolas and Estel are caught in the midst of peculiar events after a strange being begins to follow the Elf and Ranger as they travel. Before long, more than their owns lives are at stake as they try to discover the origins and intents of their apparitional visitor. Please pay attention to the tags. This story is a part of a series that is rife with abuse mental, physical, and sexual, and includes self-harm and extreme psychological disturbance. None of those tags apply to this particular part, but as it belongs to a series, bear in mind that references to those horrific events will occur. </p><p>I own none of these characters and make no money from writing about them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As I said in the description, this is the first chapter of the new part of the "Induration" series. Because it is mostly smut, I decided to post it for ya'll. I don't know if I will post the rest of the story, but I thought you might enjoy reading this much, at least. So, here you go... as a thanks for reading the story, have a taste of what happens next for our Elf and Ranger. :)

It was at times like this that Legolas wished they had brought their horses. He stuffed the last of the smoked venison into the drawstring satchel he had made days ago from the cured hide of a buck Estel had killed. Not one to waste anything if he could help it, the Prince had also kept several smaller pieces of the cured hide for patching – patching to be used should his or the Ranger’s trousers, satchels, or boots need to be repaired. Likewise, he had kept the beams and the thickest of the tines of the buck’s antlers; he had no plans for them currently, but with a little crafting and after a trip to the smithy in Bree, Legolas might make of them a few utility knives. It was his very need not to waste the gifts they took from the forest causing him now to wish for Arato to pack it all, because even though their supplies from Imladris dwindled, somehow they were still accruing other items as they went.

He paused in packing their bags to see what Aragorn was doing. The human had taken the second watch during the night, but he had not slept during the first watch as intended, for the two lovers had become distracted by each other; thus, Estel had spent little time actually sleeping. Not that Aragorn was one to complain, especially since he was the one who had instigated their betting game of whose stone could skip the most times across the lake’s surface, the wagers of which had been articles of clothing. A consummate stone skipper with years of bored practice, Legolas had lost the game on purpose, much to Estel’s knowledge and delight, and had finally shed his last piece of clothing – his trousers – to stand nude before his lover. It hadn’t taken but moments afterwards for Aragorn willingly to divest himself of his own clothing and the two to end up on the bedroll by the fire, entangled and definitely not sleeping.

Unsurprisingly, Legolas noticed the somnolent Adan sitting under the tree nearest to the lake. Had the Ranger been an Elf – or specifically a Wood-Elf – Legolas might have thought Estel and the old oak were communing. Over the past few weeks, this particular oak and the slight cradle created by its roots had become the Ranger’s favorite spot. In fact, when once Legolas had sat there, Estel had made the Wood-Elf move and claimed that it was ‘his chair.’ At this moment, while the Silvan packed their satchels, Aragorn reclined in his seat with a tiny tin mortar and pestle, in which he ground the wild mint leaves he had found earlier this morning. As Legolas watched in amused aggravation, the Ranger poured a little water into the crushed leaves. He could smell the fragrant scent of the mint from where he stood.

 _He is saddened to be leaving, I think,_ the Silvan decided, his own determination and relative good cheer falling a notch at the realization that his Adan lover wished to remain where they were.

Legolas would cherish every memory he and Estel had created while here in this secluded, remote dell, but a vague foreboding had begun to sour the Silvan’s enjoyment of their stay. They could have remained for a few weeks longer. The Elf knew winter was not the best time for humans to be travelling, but Estel was no mere human – he was better equipped and more experienced at surviving the wilds in the winter than were most of the Edain, and of course, he had Legolas to keep him warm every night, for the Wood-Elf never grew cold from the algid seasonal winds. They now had enough smoked venison stockpiled to keep them fed for at least a month, could forage from the forest the complementary greens and nuts required to stave off malnourishment, and although they were not close to Bree, they were not so removed from civilization that they would be unable to find a village to supplement their supplies if needed.

Even still, it wasn’t a matter of necessity or anxiety over the coming winter creating within Legolas this overwhelming urge to leave the area. From the first night of their stay beside the lake, Legolas had the distinct feeling they were being watched. When his indistinct uneasiness had only grown with each passing night, the Prince had told the Ranger of his worry. Trusting Legolas’ instincts entirely, the Ranger had insisted they take turns on watch again, as did they usually, and the next morning, he and Estel had trod the perimeter of the small lake in its entirety, even going so far as to comb the forest surrounding the shore. They had found signs of movement, of course, but only of the kinds of wildlife one would expect to find in the woods. Appeased that they were truly alone in their quiet copse of oaks along the shimmering, clear lake, the two had spent the evening and night swimming, eating, and then pleasing each other in idle leisure. But once done, once Aragorn was asleep with Legolas taking watch despite Estel’s insistence that there was no need, the Wood-Elf’s foreboding had returned to him.

Finally, despite Estel’s yearning to remain, Legolas convinced the man they must go. The human had not argued, he had not tried to dissuade the Elf, nor had he asked for a reason; Aragorn had reluctantly acquiesced to his lover’s desire to be gone from here. And so, this morning they would leave.

 _I think he dawdles in hopes I will change my mind,_ the laegel pondered in slight peevishness. He left off his task of packing to walk to where Aragorn sat. Taking a deep breath, the Elf tried to calm his irritation. Over the last few days, the undefined menace mounting in his mind had begun to take its toll on him, and he found himself irritable when normally the Prince was forgiving and merry to a fault. With another deep breath, he stood before the quiet Ranger and dampened his uncharitableness by giving the Adan the benefit of the doubt, thinking, _Or perhaps he is merely tired from being up all night. Or he thinks that because we leave here, we grow closer to this journey ending, and thus our time alone coming to an end, as well._

To gain the man’s attention, he first said, “Estel,” ere he told him, “You could be of help. I am almost done packing now, but there are still things that need doing before we leave,” he complained mildly to the Ranger.

Estel searched the ground around him, pointedly ignoring his Elven lover as he went about his business. When finally the human found for what he looked – a small twig of green wood – the Adan leant back, folded his legs at the ankle, and popped the end of the twig in his mouth. As he chewed the twig’s end into a tattered mess, he spared the Prince a disinterested frown before settling more comfortably against the oak’s trunk. After a long silence, the human looked up to Legolas as if surprised he was still standing there.

“I _could_ help, yes,” the Adan replied in onerous ostentation.

Estel pulled the twig from his mouth, checked the end, which now looked like the broom corn from a besom, and finding it sufficiently softened, took up his mixture of mint leaves and water. He dipped the besom’s broom into it ere he began to use the frayed end as a brush of sorts to clean his teeth. He swept the make-do besom around his upper mouth in idle motions, a slight grin gracing his bearded visage from the simple pleasure of the tingling mint refreshing his mouth; or, perhaps the Adan was trying to goad the Wood-Elf with this insouciant performance, which was the more likely cause for his growing smirk.

Legolas was fighting a losing battle not to grin in return. He tried valiantly to keep up the pretense of annoyance. “As you are not particularly busy, perhaps you could actually stand up and do something, rather than sit on your arse?”

“I am actually quite busy, thank you,” the Adan replied with a huff of mendaciously affected exasperation.

Aragorn dipped his besom into the mint mixture again and proceeded to clean the lower half of his mouth, sweeping the twig’s frayed end over and around each and every tooth, along his gums, and even giving his tongue a swipe or two. Although Legolas stood there waiting for a better reply than the one Aragorn had given him, the Adan took his time in his task, and once done, he tossed the twig aside, picked up the tin mortar, and took a swig of the thickly minted water, which he then swished around his mouth before swallowing it with a satisfied grin.

At this, the Prince could not help but to laugh. Although Aragorn’s mouth was now cleaned of their breakfast and smelled of freshly crushed mint, he had also embedded several of the mint leaves between his teeth in the process, and so now smiled a strangely green grin. Forgoing his pretend anger entirely, Legolas dropped to his knees in front of Aragorn, straddling the human’s thighs as he did so, and compelled the man to look up by grasping the Ranger’s whiskered, angular face. Without a word, he pressed his lips to Aragorn’s lips, seeking entrance to taste the mint he could smell upon the Adan. Estel kept up the subterfuge of indifference for a split second by refusing to open his lips, but once Legolas settled his rear upon the Adan’s lap, the Ranger possessively reached out to grab the Elf’s lower hips with both hands, yanking Legolas down hard onto the growing need between the human’s legs. Estel then opened his mouth, though he gave the Prince no chance to do as he had wanted in tasting the mint upon the man’s lingua, for Aragorn’s tongue coarsely pushed between the Elda’s lips, where it swept along every crevice of Legolas’ mouth in thorough greed.

If he had learnt nothing else over the past several weeks of being here alone with Estel in the wilds, Legolas had learnt this: the man was insatiable. Now that the two lovers were alone, without family or sentries nearby, and now that Aragorn was assured that Legolas’ desire for him was honest and not some symptom of grief, the Ranger was unappeasable when it came to carnal pleasure. Luckily for Estel, the laegel was always eager to comply to the man’s every desire, for he wanted the Adan as much as the Adan wanted him.

With a laugh, Legolas broke their kiss to lick his lips, telling the Ranger, “Busy indeed. You’ve done a fine job – save for all the leaves you have stuck between your teeth.” He licked his lips again, which were burning pleasingly from the stout menthol of the herb. “It tingles.”

In a flash of inspiration caused by the Elf’s words, Estel did not bother to answer but latched onto the curve where the Elf’s jaw and ear met and suckled the flesh there slightly, causing this skin to prickle similarly to how his lips still tingled from their kiss. Crudely, without warning except for a spry grin, Aragorn grabbed hold of the hem of the Prince’s tunic and undershirt to haul them upwards. The abrupt action caused Legolas to teeter backwards, and though he caught himself with his hands, he was given no chance to sit upright again, for Estel already had his mouth upon the Wood-Elf’s chest. He twisted one hand in the Adan’s thick hair, encouraging the Ranger’s questing mouth as it laved a stinging path from one roseate bud of flesh upon the Elf’s lithe chest to the other. The human’s mentholated lips, tongue, and teeth nipped and laved their way back and forth, but the untended bud felt more afire than the one currently being swathed by the Ranger’s attentions, for the cool morning air upon the sensitized, prickled flesh only heightened his pleasure when the man’s focus returned to it.

“Morgoth’s arse, Estel,” he sighed. He could feel the human’s shaft under his rear; suddenly, there were too many layers of cloth between them. By his hold of the man’s hair, he wrenched the Adan away from him. Try though he did to touch Aragorn, to bring him similar pleasure, the human did not want to stop tasting the Elf. He began, “Let me – ”

“Not now. Can’t you see I am still busy?” the Adan interrupted in a mischievous tone, his hands making quick work of the ties to Legolas’ trousers.

In passionate, hurried, and concupiscent impatience, Aragorn jerked the Elf’s trousers over his hips and down his thighs, ere he pushed the Prince to his back on the grass before the human. Only because he trusted the human completely did he not flinch or cringe at the somewhat rough treatment. Estel was not hurting him, of course; in fact, the manhandling only seemed to incite the Elf’s lust evermore. Nearly ripping the leather in his zeal, Estel pulled the Elda’s trousers past his bare feet and off him entirely, ere he flung the Elf’s legs wide open, exposing his swelling cock and the voracious opening to his body that always craved the human’s flesh to fill it.

Aragorn took up the remnants of the mint leaves and water. Sitting betwixt the laegel’s spread, bared legs, he slid two fingers into the mixture to slather them in the green tinted liquid. Legolas watched in prurient, flushed pique as Aragorn began to fondle him with those same fingers. The moment the mixture touched his skin, Legolas gasped in wonder. Many times in his long life, he had eaten the leaves of a mint plant, used them in tea or foods, or as Aragorn had just done, used them to clean his mouth; however, he had never thought to use them like this. A tingling sensation spread upon his skin everywhere the man’s fingers trailed, just as it had from Estel’s mouth moments earlier. Starting at the laegel’s tailbone, sweeping between the sculpted halves of his arse, swirling over the sensitive, grasping ring of muscle hiding his entrance, and ending at the underside of the painfully taught sacs under the Elf’s already straining, leaking cock, Estel teased the Wood-Elf with the subtle, tingling effects of the minted water.

He groaned in unabashed desire; by its own accord, the opening to his body clenched and unclenched in anticipation of being glutted by the man’s shaft. The explicit sight made Aragorn groan in response; forthwith, he dipped his fingers back into the mint leaves, scooped up some of the fresh smelling mixture, and pressed it against the laegel’s opening. At this, Legolas relaxed the ring of muscles guarding his breach, which allowed Aragorn’s fingers to slide inside him easily. Within seconds, he could feel the tingling within, as well, and nearly spent his seed at the peculiarly delightful sensation.

Neither could wait a moment longer to have what they sought from the other. They used no oil. They needed no oil. Between the minted water and the copious amount of seed leaking from Estel’s shaft, they had lubrication enough to ease the man’s entrance into the Elf’s body. Even had they not, Legolas would not have cared, so eager was he to feel his Adan lover stretching him open and filling him to his breaking point.

Once inside the Elf, the flesh of their lower bodies meeting since the Adan was housed as deeply inside the Prince as he could get, the Ranger laughed heartily and buried his face into the underside of the Wood-Elf’s neck, just under his chin. “I had no clue it would tickle this much.”

Pulling the Silvan from off the ground without pulling free of him, Aragorn sat back against the tree with Legolas astride him. Leaning backwards and placing his weight upon his hands while still facing the human, the Elf began to move his hips in a languid gait. The tingling of the mint leaves created a kind of pleasant itch within his innermost flesh that he could only soothe with friction from the Ranger’s rigid shaft, but the more he moved, the greater the tingling sensation grew, until he was bucking wildly into the human’s lower body. With his mint-covered hand, the Adan began to stroke the Silvan’s cock in time with each violent rut the Elf made against the man’s body, while Aragorn pitched his own hips upwards to meet each of Legolas’ thrusts downwards.

The whole of his attention, the whole of his being and of his existence was centered upon the receiving opening between his legs and the giving shaft between Aragorn’s muscled thighs. He forgot everything in that moment – the strange foreboding he had felt for days, the recent turmoil and woe of his life, and the imminent end of his and Estel’s time together. There was nothing; nothing but Estel and him; nothing but the pleasure they shared. It didn’t take much longer for the Elf to lose himself entirely, to become wanton and mindless, a vacuum to be filled only with the man’s seed as the Ranger gave the Elf proof of his satisfaction and adulation, the consequent knowledge of Aragorn’s love for him, and of even greater volume, the unfathomable love he felt for Estel.

When his cock shot forth his seed, he let loose a shuddering cry. His arms nearly gave out under him; however, in anticipation of this very thing happening, or so it seemed to Legolas, Estel quickly snaked his arms around the Wood-Elf’s waist and yanked him forwards and thus to him in a tight embrace.

“Greenleaf?” the Adan asked with slight trepidation, for the Elf had not stopped shaking.

Unable to speak just yet, Legolas laid his forehead against the top of the human’s head and tried to catch his breath. Soon, though, Aragorn pulled away so he could look into the Elf’s face. With a worry that Legolas had long since grown tired of seeing upon his lover’s face, the human observed the fair Elda, but upon noting how the smiling, flushed Silvan was merely winded and spent, he chuckled in lighthearted contentment. Gently, the man slid his softening shaft free of the Elf’s opening, prompted the Silvan to move to one side, and then shifted Legolas so he sat upon Estel’s lap with the side of his torso reclined against Aragorn’s broad chest. Eagerly, the Prince rested his head upon the human’s shoulder and let the human hold him. He had never willingly had a lover besides Estel, but Legolas found himself wondering if all lovers were as giving, patient, and snuggly as was his whiskered Ranger after a bout of carnal play.

“The next time you decide to clean your teeth,” the Elf finally managed to say in a voice hoarse from his raucous pleasure, “you are not allowed to use mint.”

“And why is that, Greenleaf?” the human retorted in amusement. The Adan’s hands idled along the Elf’s back and sides; as always, Aragorn was happy just to touch the Wood-Elf, and could never have his fill of merely caressing the Prince however he could. Estel teased the laegel, “Was that not a good use for the mint?”

“It was an excellent use of mint, which is why next time you clean your teeth, you are not allowed to use it. I’d much rather save it for this, instead,” he replied, wrapping his arms more tightly around the Adan to whom he had tied his heart, his faer, and his existence.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With their bags now packed and their waterskins filled, with food aplenty and their weapons honed and at ready, the two lovers had nothing left to do but leave their campsite. They had already washed off in the lake, dressed again, doused the fire pit with water, and returned the area to a nearly pristine condition. And still, Estel lingered.

The last several weeks were among the best weeks of the Adan’s life. All he had ever hoped for from Legolas, he had found here in this clearing, in the copse of oaks by the lake’s shore. Since declaring his love for Legolas by the brook that night so many hard lived months ago, Estel had feared never to be able to enjoy his love for his Greenleaf while his Greenleaf also enjoyed his love for Estel. But here, they had found the peace he had wanted for them both. Aragorn was no fool – no matter what his twin Elven brothers might tell him – and thus, he knew Legolas’ sorrow was merely abeyant and not dissolved. He knew the Elf’s faer was no longer the open, gaping wound it had been before, but like any healing wound, infection could be hiding underneath the surface, festering slowly until it found outlet.

However, the Ranger also knew Legolas did not hide his sorrow from him. Over the past several months, Aragorn would not have trusted the laegel to be honest with him about the condition of his ailing faer – not because Legolas was a liar, but because the Elf was always careful not to worry those whom he loved out of fear of burdening them. From what Legolas told him and how he acted now, the only concern the Elf held recently was over his strange belief that some unknown being lurked around their campsite. It was odd for the Silvan to feel disquiet in the forest – so odd, in fact, that despite their both having fruitlessly searched the woods surrounding the lake and spending boring nights sharing watch, Aragorn could not entirely dismiss his Elven lover’s discomfort. As much as he didn’t want to leave the lake and the relative tranquility he and Legolas had found there, he sensed the growing unease in the Elf’s mind, even after the Wood-Elf had given up trying to convince the human of the skulking, undetectable being’s existence.

So now, they walked along a deer path away from the lake, though not before the Ranger spared a final look back to it. _We will return here. I will see to it. Perhaps years from now. But we will return,_ he promised himself.

Before him, Legolas was humming softly. Estel had never heard an Elf with a poor singing voice and the Prince was no exception. No matter the content of the song, the laegel always made it sound like bittersweet melancholy, like a summery wine imbibed in a harsh snowstorm, bringing with it warm memories for the frore winter’s night. He merely followed the Elf in a satisfied, tired, and lulled trance, certain that Legolas would hear or see danger long ere he did.

His mind wandering, his gaze on Legolas’ lean back, and finding sure footing by instinct, the Ranger nearly didn’t stop in time before running right into the Elf. Just a few strides in front of him, the Prince had come to a dead stop, his humming abruptly ending mid-note. Normally, when out in the wilds, the Elf and Ranger had a range of nonverbal means of conveying information. Simply put, if the Wood-Elf discerned danger, he would hold up his hand to both quiet and halt the human behind him. But now, Legolas did neither. Aragorn inched forwards with carefully muted movements. Belatedly, the Wood-Elf held up a hand to stave off the Ranger’s questions or his approach, but by then, Estel was already behind the Silvan, his chin nearly resting upon Legolas’ shoulder in his effort to follow the Prince’s line of sight.

 _What does he see?_ the Ranger wondered in vexation.

If something fell laid ahead, Legolas would have an arrow notched upon his bowstring already, Aragorn was sure; or, if the enemy were too numerous for them to take on, the Elf would have incited the Adan into following behind him in hiding amidst the trees, rather than standing here in this open path. After several long moments of no strange sounds or motion from up ahead, Estel finally whispered into Legolas’ ear, “What do you see, Greenleaf?”

“Do you not see it?” he asked the Ranger, his voice barely audible.

Whatever it was, Legolas could not look away. Again, he peered out in front of them in the general direction in which the Prince looked, but again, he could see nothing out of the ordinary. Several arms’ lengths in front of them, a fallen oak laid upon its side with massive mushrooms growing out of its slowly decaying trunk, blocking the deer path they followed. Beyond that, there was only the same scenery as closer nearby – that is, brush, trees, bushes, and weeds, with the occasional twitter from a bird, buzz from an insect, or rustle of small game. Indeed, the wildlife was as noisome as usual, which portended to Estel that nothing ill laid up ahead, for a large predator or fell beast would have frightened away the skittish birds and reclusive squirrels, chipmunks, and various other small animals.

The Ranger shook his head in confusion, which the Elf saw from the corner of his eye and took as answer to his question. With crossness, as if he perchance thought Aragorn was being intentionally dim, Legolas hissed at the Adan, “Right in front of us – there, by the hollowed oak trunk.”

“What am I supposed to be seeing?” he asked the Elf in a similarly irascible tone. He received no response.

Now considering that the Silvan was playing some prank upon him as recompense for his orneriness that morning, Estel sidestepped to walk in front of Legolas, but he got no farther than the Wood-Elf’s side, for Legolas’ hand shot out and took a violent hold of the Adan’s tunic at his side. Unintentionally, in doing so, the Elf’s hand struck the Adan’s ribs – hard – which knocked the wind out of the human momentarily. With a chastisement upon his lips, Aragorn turned away from the uninteresting sight before them and to his Elven lover with all intentions of letting the Wood-Elf know that his prank was not appreciated. Yet, the sight of Legolas’ face ended his complaint at once.

He had never seen the Prince look so horrified.

“I see nothing there,” he assured the Elf. Concerned panic began to mount in the man’s chest, which caused his body to thrum as if he had just run at full speed up a hill. He swallowed thickly, painfully, and tried to choose his words carefully so as not to accuse the Silvan of hallucinating, although it was foremost in the Ranger’s mind. After weeks of hearing Legolas’ claims of being watched and well aware that the Elf had hallucinated a couple of months ago during the worst of his torment and sorrow, the human immediately feared it was happening now. Softly, hiding his apprehension behind what he hoped sounded to be a mild curiosity, Aragorn asked again, “What do you see?”

Owlishly, the Silvan blinked a single time, and though his face turned towards the Ranger as if to look at him, Legolas’ wide, disbelieving, cerulean eyes remained upon the sight afore him as he told Estel, “A child.”


	2. Chapter 2

Aragorn tried once more to move in front of Legolas, but the Elf would not have it. Seizing a rough hold of Estel’s bicep, the Wood-Elf yanked the human harshly backwards and then once more stepped in front of Aragorn as if in protection of the Adan from the threat that the Adan could not even see. In a harsh tone reminiscent of his father’s oft-angered voice, a tone he had never once used in his life – much less, one he would ever have thought to use with Estel – the Prince hissed these instructions at his human lover, “Stay back, Ilúvatar damn you. Stay where you are. Behind me. Move no closer to it, Estel. I don’t know what it might do.”

“There is nothing there, meleth nin,” the human replied ponderously, evenly, his own tone of voice lacking the previous irritation he had shown but one unable to hide Estel’s distress for his lover’s perceived fit of lunacy. “Perhaps the light and shadows are only playing tricks on your eyes,” the Ranger offered weakly as to why Legolas thought he saw a child where clearly there was not a thing to be seen – according to the Adan, at least. Being that Elves had more precise vision than did the Edain, it was a poor explanation, but Aragorn had yet to make sense of what the Elf thought he saw so could offer little else.

“It is no trick, no shadow. Just stay back,” he warned the human again, brokering no leeway for argument. He would never intentionally hurt the Adan, but if he had to shove Estel from the way or knock him out to keep him away from the thing before them, Legolas would not hesitate, so frantic was he to ensure the Ranger’s safety. That Aragorn could not see it only fomented Legolas’ desire to keep the human away from it, for Aragorn would not see the danger coming.

With exasperating certainty, the Ranger repeated, “There is nothing there.”

Legolas knew Aragorn must think him mad. He did not care. _It will not have him. Whatever it is, it will not have him,_ he thought in distracted, possessive determination to keep his lover out of harm’s way.

What it was, Legolas was uncertain, except that it was not a normal human child and it exuded a malevolence that was palpable to the sensitive Elda. It stood as tall as would a child of similar age – perhaps seven or eight years of age, but given its appearance, Legolas could only estimate how old it was, for of course, the Elf considered that the thing was likely not a child at all. It wore a long, sleeveless dress of coarse sackcloth cinched at the waist with a similarly rough rope. Its arms and feet were bare. Its hair was long, pale, and perhaps would have been yellow, had the thing any color at all on its body or clothes – save for its eyes, which glowed a haunting, fiery cerise, as if instead of eyes, licking flames inhabited the sockets of its skull. As he stared, his hand unintentionally tightening fearfully upon Estel’s arm, Legolas noted that despite the stout, frigid breeze blowing through the forest, its tangled hair did not move in the wind, nor did its clothing shift in the slightest. In fact, the thing had not moved at all. It stood as still as the log behind it, its gaze ever upon the Elf.

While in the pit of the cavern – while waiting for Mithfindl to return to despoil and torture him, or for starvation or thirst to kill him slowly, or even for his sorrow to drown his faer in its whelming maelstrom – Legolas had hallucinated the human’s presence. When most he had needed the Adan, the Adan had been there, even if not literally. At the time, Legolas had not cared whether he was going mad or not, for he had desired Estel’s company whilst he faded, even if that company was only a fictive form of consolation from his mind as it buckled under the weight of his grief and excruciation. Standing there in the mephitic water of the troll cave’s pit, the Prince had wept for joy to see the Adan’s pellucid form while it wavered between the child he had once been, the man he was now, and the aged Adan he would be in years to come.

But this was not the same. Firstly, although not entirely well, Legolas was no longer dazed by the milk of the poppy, he had overcome the immediacy of his sorrow, and his mind and body were as hale as could be expected; thus, there was no sickness of mind or body or extenuating circumstance on which to blame what he saw now. Secondly, Legolas had welcomed his imagining of Estel in the cave’s pit, for he had sorely desired the ease the fictional Ranger’s presence had brought, but the sight before him now was definitely not welcomed. Lastly, his hallucination of his human lover had been a force of bright, hoary, warmly comforting light at a time when he had been caught in a cold, piceous, hellish, and utter dark. Estel’s appearance in that moment had been akin to the unforgivingly empty, remote expanse of the night sky being lit by the brilliant full moon, which offered hope and guidance with its mere luminous existence. But standing in the beautiful, fecund, noisy forest in broad daylight, the silent figure before them was a gloom, a piece of the night sky in vague human form, threatening to dim the sun’s shining rays with its sheer presence. The forest around the figure seemed darker, viler, and shimmery, as if the being were extracting the life from the area around it and bending the light away from its diaphanous form. He had no cause to believe this and no rational thought to oppose this belief, but Legolas instinctively understood that should he or Aragorn get too close to the being, the very life would be pulled from their bodies and into those redly glowing eyes.

Behind him, the Ranger was speaking, but Legolas’ found it harder and harder to pay attention, while his mind raced wildly and his thoughts sped beyond his ability to grasp any one of them to make sense of what he saw. He feared to look away. Indeed, although the attenuated, umbral figure had thus far not moved, its stark titian gaze did not stray from Legolas’ eyes, which made the Prince’s cerulean orbs feel to be linked with the ethereal being’s own. The seconds seemed to Legolas to stretch into minutes, and then into hours, until a subdued part of his mind wondered for how long they had been here facing this vile being. What stood there by the downed tree might move, might come for Estel or him, and although the Elf assumed no conventional weapon could harm the apparitional figure, if it did rush them, Legolas wanted to be sure that he was first to endure its attack rather than Estel.

“Greenleaf,” the Adan implored in a desperate, near pule, and once more tried to walk around the laegel, to stand face to face with the Elf or perhaps to walk to the fallen log to search and thereby prove to Legolas that nothing resided where the Prince claimed to see something. Using more force than was needed, Legolas yet again shoved the Adan backwards, causing Estel to stumble into the taller grasses and brush beside the beaten deer path they followed. In loud and true umbrage, the Ranger called out, “Enough, Greenleaf! Stop this.”

Apparently having had his fill of the Wood-Elf’s strange behavior and the Silvan’s obvious inability to look away from what he saw before them, Aragorn took firm hold of Legolas’ arm and tugged him with all his might, and thereby jerked the unprepared Elf around and thus away from the sight to which his eyes were seemingly glued. At once, the Silvan tried to break free of Estel’s hold, to turn back to keep watch over the threat to his and the human’s safety, but the Ranger grasped the laegel’s head none too gently with a hand to each side of the Elf’s face, just under his jaw, in a hold from which it was painful for Legolas to try to escape – although it did not keep him from trying.

“What is it? What do you see?” the man asked disbelievingly, his grip tightening when Legolas began pushing at the human and wrenching his face side to side to break free of Estel’s grasp. In a shout of worried impatience, Aragorn called out, “There is no child! There is nothing there!”

He could feel Estel’s fingernails scrape against his neck and cheeks, leaving scorching welts along his skin as he finally managed to extricate himself from the Adan’s hold. Desperately, Legolas used his superior strength to shove at the human, knocking Aragorn off his feet and to his arse on the grass carpeted forest floor. Without care that he had just shoved his lover to the ground, Legolas scrambled deftly towards the hollowed, mushroomed log, wary that his inattention might have given the horrific being the opening to strike. Reminiscent of the many times he had been strangled by Mithfindl, the Elf’s throat felt fettered by hands or a noose, and he could scarcely breathe from the abject terror he felt.

_Where is it?_ he asked himself, scanning the surrounding woods quickly in search of the being. He turned in a full circle, his eyes flitting to every shadow cast, every noise around them, and every hiding spot in which the strange being could be hiding. Again, he made quick work of scanning the forest. _No real child could have fled that quickly without my notice, without my hearing it._

It was gone.

Legolas heaved a great breath, thinking to calm himself by it, though as he exhaled, he felt a wave of dizziness overcome him, which caused him to stagger as he tried to make it to where the downed trunk laid over their path. Having hurriedly gained his feet, the irate Ranger stalked behind him, and before Legolas could take another stumbling step, Aragorn had the Elf by his waist. Forcibly pulling the unsuspecting laegel down with him, the Adan dropped to his knees and summarily shifted his hold so that his arms wound around the Silvan’s torso, and thereby pinned Legolas’ limbs to his sides in a bear hug. With Aragorn practically draped over his back, Legolas was on his knees, bent at the waist, with the Ranger holding on as if he were drowning and the Prince the buoy that might keep him afloat.

“Greenleaf, listen to me. Stop,” the Ranger ordered, shaking the Elf with his embrace. “Stop this. There is nothing there.”

Had he desired, the Silvan could have broken free of Estel’s hold. Had the situation been different, Legolas would have been incensed. The man acted as if he had a right to quell the Prince’s actions, as if he had any right to try to contain the Wood-Elf with physical force; however, so relieved was the laegel at this moment that he meekly huddled under Aragorn’s weight, his attention still upon the forest around them as he searched for sign of where the being had gone. The apparition had abruptly disappeared as if it had been a mere wisp of smoke from Estel’s pipe caught and scattered in the wind. They stayed that way for several minutes. Apparently afraid to move lest Legolas take off through the woods without him, Aragorn did not loosen his grip upon the Prince, even though the Silvan was quiet and docile. The Prince’s current silence and obeisance frightened the human nearly as much as had Legolas’ reaction to what the Ranger assumed to be a hallucination.

“Greenleaf?” Estel asked simply. The laegel’s mere name hinted at the myriad questions Aragorn wanted to ask the Elf.

“Let go of me,” he told the human though he did not try to escape just yet. “I need to look for it.”

“No,” the Adan replied, “I am not letting go until I know you see reason.” Around the Elf, he could feel the Ranger’s arm muscles straining evermore in their effort to detain him, despite that Legolas did not fight against this restraint. It wasn’t until Aragorn’s hold began to relax that Legolas realized his entire body had been as taut as a bowstring pulled beyond its stretching point. “Do you mean you cannot see it any longer?”

“It’s gone.” The Prince breathed in deeply once more to try to compose himself before he let it out in a ragged, soughing exhale. “Whatever it was, it is gone.”

Confused and dismayed, the Elf’s quiver digging painfully into his chest and his muscles aching from their hold, the petrified Ranger laid his chin upon the Wood-Elf’s shoulder, his face turned in towards the braids of hair ensconcing the Prince’s ear from view, and swept one hand to the center of Legolas’ chest, which he then pressed against as reassurance for himself and for the Elf. Feeling how the Silvan’s heart was now slowing from its rapid drubbing to a normal pace, Estel used his other hand to push against the side of Legolas’ face, which compelled the Elf’s head hard against the Ranger’s temple. He began, “Legolas. There was nothing – ”

“There was. It was there. By the log. Staring at me,” he interrupted to try to explain to Estel, his speech mere confused fragments, for they matched his incomplete thoughts. Desperate to be believed, for the laegel did not doubt what he saw in the least, he tried to convince the human, “It was there, Estel. I saw it.”

“You said you saw a child, but Greenleaf, there was nothing there,” the Adan told the Elf as he finally released Legolas and sat back on his heels.

Taking each of Legolas’ shoulders in hand, Aragorn tried to force the Prince into turning around to face him, and thus into looking away from the fallen tree trunk, but of course, Legolas was stronger and he easily jolted free of the man’s hands. He did not want to put his back towards the place where the being had been. Estel would not be so easily dissuaded, however. Clambering to his knees, Aragorn walked upon them around the Elf until he sat in front of Legolas, and then sat down upon his heels again. They now sat similarly upon the ground, face to face, with Aragorn’s back to the trunk and Legolas facing both it and Estel. But the Prince was not appeased. The being could be nearby. In fact, before he could counter Aragorn’s statement, the laegel heard a slight rustling from near the trunk.

At once, Legolas was upon his feet and striding away from the Ranger, his only thought to ascertain whether the area was clear so that Aragorn would be safe. Not even Estel’s worry – or his desire to end the man’s worry, that is – could keep the Elf still and quiet. Not even the realization of how he sounded like a lunatic, of how he was frightening the Ranger, would keep him from his task. With adamant purpose but lingering fear, the Silvan stopped just short of where the being had stood only a moment ago. He heard the man’s huff of aggravation and then the whispering of the grass as the Ranger moved upon it to stand, as well.

“Greenleaf – ”

Again, he interrupted the human, saying, “No, it was right here, Estel. Upon my life… upon my father’s life…” The Silvan trailed off as he suddenly thought better of his words, for his own life meant little to him and his father’s life meant little to Estel, and so he said instead, swearing over that which he held dearest to him, “No. Upon _your_ life – I swear to you. Right here,” he exclaimed and pointed to where the being had been standing, “right here, there stood a child, if one can call it that.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To say that the Ranger was scared was a massive understatement. He did not even consider if the Elf was right, for he had seen with his own eyes that Legolas was wrong; and yet, Aragorn didn’t doubt for a second that Legolas believed what he said. This disparity was what frightened him, for the Elf’s certainty and his own disbelief put them at an impasse. He stood there quietly, calmly, when inside, he was anything but. When the intrusive and odious scar had kept the Prince under the thrall of its opinions, Aragorn had often logicized against the mar’s vociferations as a means to aid the Elf in combatting its hold over Legolas’ mind. So, his first thought was to do this now, and as Estel labored to find a way to make the Silvan see sense, a niggling doubt fretted at the fringes of his thinking as to whether the scar played some part in his lover’s current mania.

“If there had been a child standing there, why not speak to him? Why did you not want me near him?” he tried to reason. Laying a hand upon the Elf’s shoulder, the Ranger found his unwanted comfort shrugged off, for Legolas thought his lover to be patronizing him in an attempt to placate the Silvan’s agitation.

Absently, the Elf corrected, “Her. The child was female. A female human.”

He stood beside the Silvan and looked to the ground where the Prince indicated with his aiming finger. There were no footprints upon the forest floor, no broken weeds or trampled wildflowers, and no broken mushrooms upon the log right next to where the Elf pointed. He knelt down and fingered one of the unspoilt blades of grass. He did not need to tell the laegel what he found, for the Silvan was as consummate a tracker as was he, and so already knew that there was no evidence for the girl child’s being there.

Adamantly, eagerly, and somewhat spitefully, the laegel repeated, “She was there, Estel.”

Legolas knelt down next to Aragorn and spread the leaves of grass apart as if seeking the ground underneath for further clues. However, with a start, the Elf soon thought better of doing so; Aragorn did not understand why the Prince suddenly stood and began looking around with that same wild eyed franticness as before, but it made him stand, as well, in case he had to tackle the Wood-Elf to the ground to keep him from taking off into the forest without him. His growing anxiety began to overwhelm him as he realized, _I am alone in the forest with Greenleaf; there is not a settlement or village closer than three full days walk; we have no horses; Greenleaf is stronger and faster than me, so there is no hope that I could possibly contain him if he becomes distraught._ It wasn’t that he feared being the victim of Legolas’ violence – a violence that might come about because of the hallucinations the Elf seemed to be having – but he would be unable to stop the Prince should the Elf take off through the woods to find or kill this being he claimed to see. Similarly, he would be unable to keep up with the Prince if Legolas took to the trees. The idea of losing his lover in the forest while the Silvan was under some fit of madness or grief caused his every muscle to stand at ready to catch Legolas.

But then, the Ranger consoled, _I am getting ahead of myself. This may just be an isolated incident. Perhaps the paranoia he has been feeling at the lake in thinking that we were being watched has finally come to a head. It may not happen again. I shouldn’t assume Greenleaf has succumbed to some illness of his faer or mind, merely because he has mistakenly seen something now._ Not yet having the details of what the Elf saw, the Ranger was able to mollify himself with this assurance.

He abruptly realized Legolas was watching his silent cogitations. The wrath upon the Silvan’s face was blatantly obvious, although Aragorn could deal with the Prince’s anger. What he could not deal with, however, was the hurt upon his lover’s fair features. Seeing this indignation reminded the Ranger of just whose side he was supposed to be taking – even during moments such as this one, when the Adan was certain the Elf was wrong. In his belly, a nausea inducing guilt snaked writhingly.

“I’m sorry, Greenleaf,” he found himself saying automatically, for he was willing to do or say anything to remove the hurt upon the Elf’s face – a hurt for which he was the cause. With a shake of his head, Legolas dismissed the coming apology, clearly not believing it to be sincere, but ere Legolas could walk away as intended, Aragorn took hold of the Elf’s arm to stop him. “Greenleaf,” he whispered plaintively, saying again in hopes of gaining the Silvan’s attention, “Greenleaf.”

Not looking at Estel but at the man’s hand where it was latched onto his arm, Legolas did not evade the human’s touch though he refused to look Aragorn in the eye while he told him, “We should not tarry here. It is dangerous.”

“Greenleaf,” he said again, tugging lightly the laegel’s forearm in hopes of making his lover look at him. When it did not work, he went on anyway, telling the Elf, “I am sorry. I do not doubt that you believe you saw something, meleth nin, but I could not see it.”

Finally, Legolas looked to the human. A cold and hard determination made the Elf’s blue eyes appear frosty. So much like Thranduil did Thranduilion look in that moment that Aragorn released the Prince’s arm out of instinct. “It does not matter if you believe me, or whether you saw it or not. I saw it. We need to leave here in case it returns – now.”

The Wood-Elf did not need to be told what his lover had been thinking, for Legolas knew Estel well enough to know how his mind worked and to what conclusions it had led him. This did not stop the Adan from admitting to the Wood-Elf with all honesty, “I thought you hallucinated. I could not see it, so I thought you imagined it being there. I have no reason to doubt your word, except that I did not see what you did, and except that your sorrow has caused you to hallucinate before today. I am sorry, Legolas. Are you certain you saw a child standing here? What exactly did you see?”

His candidness earned Estel what his apology had not – the Elf’s understanding and clemency. The tight and irate set of the Prince’s shoulders and face softened, he let loose a long sigh, and then stepped closer to the Ranger. Lifting a hand to the man’s face, Legolas briefly caressed the Adan’s cheek, which was bearded from not having shaved since their departure from Rivendell. There was no doubt in the Elf when he guaranteed the human, “I am certain of what I saw. Let us leave here immediately. I do not know what it was, but I will not stand here and wait for it to return to harm you, Estel. Quickly and quietly, let us be away from here. I will explain later, I promise you.”

With a nod, the Ranger agreed – if only to appease the fraught Elf. As they had before, the Silvan walked ahead of them, though this time, Legolas did not hum and their pace was not the dawdling, cheerful one of before. This time, Legolas strode through the brush as if he would rather be running.

Aragorn wanted answers. He wanted to know what it was the Elf thought he saw. He wanted to know why – if the Prince thought he saw a child – that the Elf felt it to be a danger. More than anything, Estel wanted to know if Legolas had truly seen something, or if he now had a hallucinating Wood-Elf to care for all alone in the remote woods.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've added some warnings: gore, supernatural elements, and the like. Please be advised that although this arc of the series is not "dark" in the same way as the first arc, it will be "dark" in other ways. 
> 
> As always, if you see any errors, please point them out to me. Thanks and enjoy.

They were in the thick of a section of woods that had at one time been harvested for lumber and firewood – the human could tell this by the many young trees and the few old trees around them, the absence of dead trees, the frequent openings in the canopy above them, and the thickness of the feverishly green foliage around their legs. These were all clear signs that they were approaching recently inhabited lands. Indeed, the Ranger knew there to be a village nearby but he was not yet certain of where they were in relation to it, for so far in the midst of these woods were they that there were currently few distinguishable markers by which to navigate their way. They still trailed the deer path they had followed from this morning, but it was not a straight shot, and so led them in a meandering course through the forest and towards the sun slowly descending upon the westernmost lands of Middle Earth.  

It had been midmorning when the Prince had seen the child – whether a hallucination or apparition, the human still could not determine – and it was now late afternoon. The busyness of the forest this morning was slowly becoming ever more somnolent as the day progressed. The same could be said of the Ranger, who had begun this trek lethargic and worn from having had no sleep the night before. The two lovers had not stopped for even a moment’s time. For hours now, they had remained mostly silent – or at least, the Elf had refused to speak, despite Aragorn’s attempts to incite conversation.

Legolas kept an odd pace that was difficult for Aragorn to match; he found himself constantly overtaking the Elf by running too quickly or falling behind by slowing down too much. With his long, nimble legs moving fluidly somewhere between a brisk trot and an all-out run, the Elf did not pause, did not falter, and he did not seem to notice that Aragorn was having trouble keeping pace; however, Estel knew better than to think the Wood-Elf did not care if his lover managed to follow. The Ranger had only to ask and the Elf would stop for a rest or at least slow down; and yet, the panic underlying the Prince’s slipping mask of stoicism was gradually becoming more apparent, which was why the human had yet to make his lover stop this rampant race through the woods. For his part, the Ranger felt nearly as anxious as did Legolas, albeit for different reasons. With the clear impression that they were running away from something, the Ranger had not demanded answers from the Elf, although he would not be able to maintain his peace over the subject for much longer. Besides which, the human was hungry, he needed desperately to piss, and although he was not yet fatigued and could carry on at this rate for hours more, he was weary of his lover’s silence and of his own unmitigated worries.

Deciding that he could take no more, Aragorn came to a full stop. Whether by the sudden lack of sound of Aragorn’s feet upon the ground or just from instinct, the wary and overly attentive Wood-Elf took notice at once. Estel discerned the panic with which the Silvan whirled around to find the cause for the Adan’s standstill, for Legolas obviously feared something had caused the human to stop other than the human’s own volition.

He began untying his trousers, giving the Elf no chance for argument when he told Legolas, “If I do not piss, I will end up flooding my boots.”

Despite his anxiety, the harried Silvan chuckled in honest but weak amusement. Although Aragorn needed no privacy from his lover for this matter, he still found it odd how Legolas stepped closer to him, his alertness seeming to grow the longer they remained still. When done, he laced his trousers up and insisted, “I am hungry, Greenleaf. Let us eat.”

Turning his wary attention away from the forest around them and to the Ranger, Legolas was on the verge of disagreeing, of claiming as he had several times before that they were not yet far enough away to suit his need for protecting the Adan. His aggravation besting his better sense, the human bluffed, while hoping the Elf would not call him upon it, “Listen: I am hungry, I am thirsty, and I want to sit down for a moment. If you wish, go on without me, but I am eating, drinking, and resting for a short while, with or without you. I can catch up later if you don’t wish to stop.”

There was no way Aragorn would ever willingly let the Prince go on without him and he believed there was no way Legolas would ever willingly go on without Estel, especially since the human was unable to see the dangerous being over which the Prince worried. Fortuitously, Legolas did not call the human on this bluff but took the Ranger seriously. With an aggrieved, dismayed nod that pained Estel’s heart to know he was the cause of, Legolas agreed as he removed his satchel from where it hung over his arm, “Fine. But quickly, Estel, please. Let us tarry here no longer than is necessary.”

They walked a short distance away to where a rotting tree stump sat amidst some tall goldenrod, which still held their withered blooms. Contentedly, the human sat upon the stump, leaving room for Legolas to sit beside him and offering with his hand this space as a seat, but the Elf only shook his head in negation. Handing his satchel to Aragorn, wherein the bulk of their foodstuffs were stored, Legolas turned a full circle to inspect their surroundings for threat. Finding none, he still did not sit, but continued keeping watch on his lover’s behalf. Legolas stood directly in front of the human, as if he did not want to let Aragorn out of arm’s reach in case he was needed to prevent the human from being attacked by their apparitional stalker. When the Ranger handed the distracted Elf a hunk of the freshly smoked venison jerky, Legolas absently began tearing it into small pieces, which he ate perfunctorily. Estel was glad to see the Silvan was willing to eat, at least, and he took out a hunk of the jerky for himself, as well.

His mouth full of half-chewed meat, Estel used this opportunity to try to question Legolas. He began by asking as he had asked several times over the last few hours, “Do you see it now?”

With trepidation, he awaited the Elf’s answer. According to what Legolas had told the Ranger and from the little bit of information he had managed to glean from the Silvan so far, the Elf had not seen the child since that morning. “No. I do not see it. But I can sense its presence. It feels like how it felt at the lake, as if someone is watching us.”

“What was it? What did you see?” he asked the Silvan.

Already, five or more times this morning and early afternoon, Aragorn had queried the same. Each time, he had been put off of his inquiry by the Wood-Elf’s insistence that they could speak of it later, when Legolas felt that Estel would be safe. However, even without seeing the child, if the Elf still felt it was near, by Estel’s account, they were not moving any closer to safety. He longed to point this out to the Prince but feared doing so would only aggravate the Elf’s need to flee further and faster, which seemed pointless to Aragorn. If the Silvan was not hallucinating, if he had actually seen something, then their weapons were useless against it, anyway.

Aragorn pulled out another piece of jerky ere he put the pouch back in the Elf’s satchel. Splitting the meat into halves, he pressed the larger half into the Elf’s hand. Again, Legolas took the offering and began eating it without truly paying attention to anything but the forest around them. When he had swallowed his last bite, the Adan’s frustration took hold of him yet again, for he had waited patiently for an answer for hours now and still had yet to receive one.

“Greenleaf,” he chided grumpily. The human wanted to stand, but with the Elf nearly between his knees – so close was Legolas in trying to safeguard Aragorn – he would have needed to push the laegel from the way to do so. Instead, he reached out to take hold of the Prince’s tunic, which he tugged on to try to gain the focused Silvan’s attention. “Tell me what you saw.”

“Not now,” the Prince responded at once, not even looking at Estel, but his gaze ever upon the peacefully, naturally noisy forest around them. “Let us hurry and get as far away from this place as possible before night falls.”

The farther they walked from the lake, the surer he became that Legolas was suffering from some ailment of his faer and their flight from the Elf’s hallucination would only worsen Legolas’ condition by affirming his belief in the strange imagining. The Adan was at his wit’s end. He felt like he was ransoming his own safety, the payment of which was Legolas’ answers, and perhaps he was being unfair in doing so, but Aragorn could not help it – unable to rein in his impatient aggravation, he jerked the Elf’s tunic again and exclaimed in another threat that was less bluff than the one from before, “No, Greenleaf! I am not walking another step without knowing from what we are fleeing!”

Again, Legolas gave the Adan a pained and miserable frown, for the Elf knew what his lover thought of his assertion of having seen a human girl in the woods earlier – that is, Legolas knew Estel thought him to be hallucinating. And again, Estel felt a smothering guilt wrap itself around his chest from his being the cause of his lover’s melancholy. With a reluctant nod, the disconsolate Wood-Elf sighed and told the Ranger, “Fine, Estel, but quickly.”

“What is it exactly that you saw?” he wanted first to know. Fidgeting in agitation, the Adan shifted in his seat upon the stump by scooting nearly off it, such that he was close enough to the Elf that he could rest his forehead upon Legolas’ torso, had he wanted. Looking up into his lover’s worried, cerulean eyes, the Adan tried to get specific details by asking, “You said a human child, but what does that mean, Greenleaf?”

At the mention of the girl, Legolas’ attention to Estel fled, and he began searching the woods around them with renewed fervor. However, he answered the Adan, saying, “She was no more than ten, her hair light, wearing roughhewn clothing, no shoes, and no cloak. But she had no color, Estel.” Legolas shivered as if a cold chill had run up his spine and continued, “She was nearly transparent. The light of the sun and the liveliness of the woods seemed vapid and dead around her, as if her presence caused Anor’s light and Arda’s life to flee. Or as if she sucked the light and life from everything near her. Never in my years have I seen anything like it.”

The Elf shivered again. Aragorn reached out to take one of the Prince’s hands between his own. _If he truly hallucinated this child, then from what horrific depths of his despair did this imagining spring?_ To his consternation, Estel felt fear over the Elf’s description. The Ranger had retained some hope since that morning that the Prince might have truly been mistaken, that his paranoia from days of believing they were being watched combined with the play of light upon the ground and upon the fallen trunk where he said the child stood might have played some trick upon his eyes. That hope was now dwindling. Legolas brought his free hand to where Estel’s hands held his, encasing and then pulling their entwined limbs to his belly, where he pressed them tightly to his honed flesh. The Ranger remained quiet, for he could tell the Prince was not finished and was merely sorting through the information in his mind ere he tried to relate it to Aragorn.

“Where her eyes ought to have been…” the Elf began but faltered. He looked down to Aragorn, who felt his own flesh crawl in a slow shudder in sympathy for the repulsed fright upon his lover’s face. “It was as if she had burning coals where her eyes ought to have been. Two brightly burning, smoldering, red coals. It was the only color upon her. She did not move nor speak, nor did her hair or clothes shift in the wind. She was thin. Not her body, I mean, though her flesh was meager as most poorly fed children, but her whole being was thin – as if she were paint smeared upon a pane of glass. But she was no mere child. Not from her actions or words – for as I said, she neither spoke nor moved – but from her mere presence, from how she stared at me with the fiery, licking flames where her eyes once sat, she seemed wholly evil. It felt to me that should we get too close to her we might be consumed by those rubicund flames or our lives and light would be darkened by her nearness.”

A slight rustle in the blanket of fallen leaves behind the Adan caused the Elf to quiet, to turn his ear and his gaze toward the origin of the sound. Aragorn could find no response to Legolas’ elucidation of the morning’s events. He was rather sorry he had asked. The jerky he had been so eager to stop to eat now felt like an indigestible wad of gristle in his stomach. So matter of factly, so vividly did the Silvan speak that the Adan could not dismiss his lover’s words as easily as he had hoped. This whole day of walking, the Ranger had constructed argument after argument in his mind to use against the Elf’s delusion – just as he had once done in battling the embittered voice of the scar and its illogical hold over the Silvan’s mind. But now, he had no doubt the Prince saw what he described, even if neither of them could understand what or who the child was. After a short while of silence in which the startled and confused Adan tried to suss out his lover’s explanation, Legolas once more looked down to Estel, to gauge what the Adan thought of what he’d been told. At seeing the blatant anxiety upon the human’s face – an anxiety Legolas misread as the Ranger’s fear for the Silvan’s sanity rather than for the vile being the Elf had described – the agitated and forlorn Prince pulled his hands free of Aragorn’s and grabbed for his satchel.

“Enough of this,” he ordered harshly in a pale attempt to hide his disappointment at being forsaken by the Adan, for being labeled a lunatic and thus untrustworthy. Looping his satchel over his shoulder again, the no less indomitable Prince snarled, “Whether you believe me or not, I will not chance your life. And do not tell me you are not going, Estel. I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you to safety if I must. Let us go.”

“Wait, Greenleaf.”

He stood rapidly and took hold of the Elf’s waist in the familiar, easy grip of which only a lover is capable. This stopped the Silvan at once, though he refused to look at the Ranger. Knowing the Prince’s antagonism only hid his dolorous distress, Aragorn sought to remove the misunderstanding immediately. Without lustful intent but in comfort, the Adan slid his hands gingerly down over the swell of the Prince’s rear and then up to the middle of his back, before he began again. To his relief, the Elf did not clout him for this, despite his obvious irritation with the Adan; Legolas peered over the human’s shoulder to the woods rather than at Aragorn, although his tensed posture began to relax at the Ranger’s skillful, loving handling.

“I believe you,” Estel promised the Prince in quiet solemnity. Hesitantly, Legolas gave the human the whole of his attention again as he searched Aragorn’s bearded features for signs of any mendacious mollification. “I believe you, Greenleaf,” he said another time.

The distrust with which Legolas looked at him drove a spike of loathing through Estel’s chest. He had promised never to hurt the Elf; while few who knew of what Legolas had suffered would blame Aragorn for his questioning of the Prince’s claims of seeing an apparition in the forest, he blamed himself for hurting Legolas with his suspicion.

After a silent moment, Legolas’ shoulders drooped and his forehead met the man’s for a moment, ere he lifted his head to inquire, “You are not merely trying to placate me, are you, Estel? You truly believe I saw this human child?”

“Yes,” he agreed at once, but then clarified while he swept the Elf’s long, thick, and flaxen hair off his shoulders, “well, I believe you saw something, but by your own account it was no human child, was it? You saw something, and I do not doubt that it was real – whatever it was.”

Aragorn was surprised to see the glimmer of unshed, grateful, relived tears as they welled up in his lover’s eyes. He finally understood, _I have been aggravated with him all afternoon, disbelieving him, assuming he was hallucinating, thinking that his faer has begun to disease, while Legolas has been wild with panic – on my behalf. Since I did not see it, he is the only one who might keep us safe from it, should the thing actually be dangerous and not some benign – even if frightful looking – apparition._ A different kind of terror suddenly overtook the man’s mind, as he realized the predicament in which the Prince was mired. _If this thing is truly evil, as Greenleaf says it feels to him to be, then he guards us and fights it alone._ It wasn’t for his own safety he worried, for much like the Elf, the Adan wanted more that his lover be safe and well. Thus, he found himself fretting, _I cannot protect Greenleaf. I cannot even protect myself._

Feeling like a mean spirited fool, the Adan cupped his lover’s smooth cheeks in his calloused hands, his need to ease the overwrought Silvan overwhelming his desperate need for more information. As he ran his thumbs over the Silvan’s high and dominant cheekbones, with regret, the Ranger noticed the marks upon the Elf’s face and neck. These reddened lines had been made by Estel’s fingernails that morning, when the Prince had tried and succeeded in wrenching his face free of the Adan’s hold. Legolas closed his eyes and ever so slightly leant into the man’s gentle touch, a brief smile gracing his lips. Unthinkingly, the Adan leant forward and pressed a chaste buss to his lover’s mouth. In other circumstances, the two would have allowed their kiss to deepen until they were gasping for air and burning with desire, but this time, Legolas soon pulled away upon remembering his current purpose of maintaining watch.

Hefting his satchel and adjusting his weapons, the Prince then took his skin of water from where it was latched onto his belt, uncapped it, and took a long swig before passing it to Estel, who did the same. Although several minutes had passed, Legolas answered the human’s previous statement as if he had only just said it, capping the waterskin and replacing it upon his belt as he agreed, “It was not a normal human girl child, you are right of that.”

“Then what do you think it was? A ghost? Some remnant of a violent or dark memory held by the woods?” the Adan offered. He knew little of such things except from stories, had never seen anything similar to what Legolas described, and having not even seen the being today, was at an utter loss to conjecture what it might be. “And why was I unable to see it?”

“I am not certain. The Eldar are more sensitive to ethereality. But in all my years, I have never once seen a ghost,” the Prince admitted uneasily. Neither the Elf nor Ranger liked being ignorant of with what they were dealing, especially since they could only assume that this being was not a mortal foe who could be killed like an Orc or bandit. This was unfamiliar territory for them both. Adding his own queries to the Adan’s questions, in rapid, practiced motions, Legolas felt the items upon his body to ascertain that he had everything as he asked, “Why a human child? If it were some spirit, why would she follow us? Why did her very presence feel more reviling than being surrounded by famished Wargs and bored Orcs?”

He did as the Elf did in patting down his person to check he had everything at ready. Again, Aragorn considered if he ought to bring up whether their fleeing would be of any use against the presence. Before he could broach the topic, this unbidden thought came to him in that moment: Legolas being an Elf might not be the cause for his ability to discern the child’s spirit – if that is what he saw. _Greenleaf has been on the verge of succumbing to death these past few months. He has walked a fine line between living and dying, with his rhaw almost broken beyond repair and his faer so often eager to fade. I wonder, then, if perhaps his closeness to death isn’t the cause for his being able to see it while I cannot,_ he thought but was too cautious of upsetting his tenderhearted lover to say aloud.

Legolas shook his head roughly, his braids twitching around his ears as he tried to clear his mind of the thoughts of how and why, thoughts that might only distract him. In fact, he said as much, telling Aragorn, “I suppose for now, what it is does not matter. What matters is that we keep moving, putting more distance between us, so that I know you will be safe. Come,” the Elf instructed, towing the man’s arm to incite him to follow.

Such incitement was not needed. As much as he had wanted to stop, the Ranger found himself more than willing to leave. His unmitigated worries had not been appeased in the least, but only amplified. The only relief Estel felt was in knowing Legolas had not lost hold of his sanity.

_I wonder…_ he mused, unwittingly mimicking the Elf’s actions by peering into the surrounding woods with utmost caution, despite his apparent inability to see the thing for which he looked. _I wonder – how far is far enough away for us to be safe?_

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a few short hours, Anor would finish her daily voyage across the wide expanse of sky overhead. For Legolas, the day had gone by too quickly. The deer path they had trailed all day had ended at a small brook. The brook had turned into a stream, and after following its bank for a while, the stream had eventuated into a creek. For no reason other than because the creek flowed in the same westerly direction in which they travelled, the two lovers walked along the creek’s bank.

“Greenleaf,” the human whispered behind him.

At once, Legolas turned around, his heart commencing to hammer in his chest from the man’s mere saying of his name. But the human was well, the Elf’s seeking eyes saw nothing in the woods around them, and the Silvan took a surreptitious deep breath to calm himself ere he asked in similar quiet tone, “What is it, Estel?”

“I have just realized that I have been here before,” the Adan told the Elf. Aragorn looked up at the sky to gauge the sun’s position in the west, taking into account the time of year, and then looked behind them to the far distant Misty Mountains – all of which he used to establish his bearings. “If we follow this stream to its fork and then follow its southern branch, we will come to a village. It is little more than a farming village, without a fortress or a market, and without even an inn, but as I recall, the people there are gentlefolk who welcome the Dúnedain, since they are freefolk with no lord to protect them and no army or guard of their own. It is a little out of our way, taking us further south than we had intended,” the Adan explained, coming to stand directly beside the Elf, “but I can think of no safer place for us to be for now. And perhaps the people there will have some knowledge of the strange happenings here in the forest.”

Aragorn knew these areas as well as Legolas knew the Mirkwood forest, so he trusted the Ranger’s directions without question. He nodded gladly and gave the Adan an appreciative smile. _If nothing else,_ he told himself, _by walking through the night towards this village, we place even more distance between us and that fell being._

Without conferring further and as they were on the northern side of the stream, the two crossed the watercourse now while it was still light so that they would not need to do so in the dark to pursue its southern branch later.

Regardless of his great fear of whether he would be able to keep his lover safe, the Wood-Elf was also relieved beyond measure. Estel believed him. It was a simple thing, to be sure, but after months of having his friends and second family ignoring his constant assurances to them that he was well – even if at times he had been prevaricating and not actually as well as he had thought himself to be – to have Aragorn now accept him at his word was a wondrous thing. It might also make the Ranger amenable to the Elf’s attempts to safeguard him, the Elf prayed.

After a couple more arduous hours – hours in which the Elf found his neck aching from the constant strain of constantly trying to react to determine the cause behind every noise and the content of every shadow – they began to see the first true signs of civilization. A short, decrepit wall made from the limestone of the very creek they followed ambled alongside the waterway. Not tall enough to keep in livestock or to keep unwanted persons out, the wall was likely only a demarcation of its builder’s property, which in Legolas’ thinking was very much a human thing to do. The field contained within the wall was fallow and filled with brush and young saplings, as if the land had not been tilled and tended for several years. Given the state of the wall itself, the Elf also considered that the farmland might be abandoned.

_Perhaps there will be a house nearby,_ he wished, unintentionally increasing his pace until once more the two were nearly running. Although they rarely stopped, Legolas would often turn to face the Ranger, to look behind them. Just as Estel had earlier thought, the Silvan had already wondered how far they might need to travel to be free of the cloying, inexplicable, malevolent presence that the Elf could feel even now. Like the Adan, Legolas knew little true knowledge of spirits and haunts except that which he had been told through stories – most of which were legends and tales that had no or little basis in fact. And so, he could only hope that their continued flight might place enough distance between them and the peculiar, seemingly malicious apparition of the Adan child. _Perhaps they will know of this ghost or spirit. Even if they do not,_ the laegel thought somewhat uncharitably, _perhaps if there are others around, Estel will be safe because she will have other targets for her evil._

He smelled it long before he saw it and the smell only grew stouter the farther along the creek they followed. _Death,_ the Silvan thought, his nose wrinkling in concentration to determine the source behind the unmistakable smell. They soon found the cause. The Elf paused, his aching neck and tired mind forgotten as he spotted something up ahead of them. Behind him, Aragorn waited instinctively, not even needing for the Prince to warn him to halt, for unlike before, when the Adan had been following behind the Wood-Elf while assuming the laegel would sense danger long before he did, Aragorn now paid as close attention to their surroundings as did Legolas.

Making a quick circle with his eyes, the Elf scanned the area around them once more. He was well aware that any being who could evaporate into thin air as the apparition had done that morning could more than likely appear at whim, as well, but knowing this did not stop him from his vigilance. Once more assured for the moment that there was nothing but him, the Ranger, and the wildlife of the forest, Legolas gave his full attention to the sight ahead of them, from where the smell of death emanated.

Lying near the wall, against a tree growing right beside the stone fence, there laid some being. In the dim illumination of the waning sunlight, Legolas counted four vultures feeding on the remains. At first, he was willing to dismiss it as an animal, for the carcass was small, with most of it hidden behind the massive bodies of the vultures feasting upon its decaying flesh. However, when one of the vultures moved slightly, the Elf caught the sight of pale yellow, and although his mind was slowly connecting what he saw now with what he had seen earlier, he actively fought against the understanding.

_It can’t be,_ he told himself, shaking his head in dismissal of such a conclusion. Behind him, the Ranger tried to see what the Prince saw; Legolas could feel Estel’s inquisitiveness, though the human did not seek to satisfy his curiosity just yet.

Together, without speaking, Elf and Ranger trod quietly, slowly onwards toward the carrion and its feasters. While there were some who abhorred the vultures and other creatures who ate dead things, the Wood-Elf was not one of them. The vultures were only performing their part in Ilúvatar’s design, after all, and he had no wish to kill them with his arrows just for doing as was in their nature to do. He looked around him until he found something suitable. The Prince bent low, picked up a rock from the bank, and threw it at the vultures to frighten them away from their dinner. He would have shouted or run at them to scare them off but he was still unwilling to garner any more attention to himself and Ranger than was needed. The rock harmlessly struck one of the vultures in the back, and with an indignant squawk, the vulture hopped away from where it stood beside its meal. It was then that Legolas obtained his first clear view of the corpse lying up ahead of them.

A thin leg, bare and pale with the sallowness of death, stuck out from the windswept pile of leaves covering the other leg and part of the corpse’s torso. It wore no shoes. The sackcloth, rough dress the corpse wore had no sleeves, which let the Elf see its bare arms. Although its yellow, long, and tangled hair covered most of its face, Legolas saw enough to realize that he looked upon the body of a dead Adan girl child.

_It is her. It is her,_ his mind supplied him, even as he again shook his head in negation of so horrifying a discovery. By now, Estel had seen what the Elf saw, though in less detail with his less keen vision. _It is the Adan child. The real Adan child and not some haunt._

Much though he longed to cross the creek, to walk beyond view of the corpse, to pretend he had never seen the small, lifeless, and pallid body there in the withered leaves, he would never forgive himself if he left the child there to be eaten by vultures. For a moment, he forgot about keeping watch over the woods around them, he did not think about the ghost, and he did not take care in hiding his reaction to this finding from Estel. Out of habit, Legolas pressed a hand hard against his chest, just as he used to do when his sorrow began to pain him physically.

At once, Estel was beside him, the Elf’s elbow in hand. “Greenleaf?”

He schooled his actions and emotions, gave the human a vague nod, and then began towards where the vultures were once more feeding, while leaving Aragorn to follow behind him in worried confusion. “Stop. Stay a short distance back,” he demanded of Estel. “Stay right here for now.”

For once, the Ranger listened to the Elf and did not follow Legolas right up to the corpse. His approach frightened off the carrion birds, who complained gratingly with noisome caws. He stopped a few strides before reaching the body to look back at Aragorn; pleased that his lover had actually done as asked, he gave the Adan a thankful smile and then turned back to the grisly sight of the Adan child’s body. Being soft and easily plucked, the eyes were often one of the first parts of a corpse to be eaten by predators or vultures. This child’s eyes were no different. Not realizing he had stopped breathing some time ago, the Elf felt dizzy upon noting that where the child’s eyes ought to be there were only two empty sockets, the insides of which were reddish black from long congealed, putrefying blood.

_She has been out here for weeks, I think,_ he considered. With the cold, dry air, she had not moldered as fast as she would have in the heat and humidity of summer, but she was not unscathed. Her flesh had the appearance of marble, though it lay across her bones like a wet cloth draped over a bundle of sticks. The vultures and other carrion creatures had pecked and gouged at her body in various areas, the worst of which was her face, where one cheek was nearly missing, while the other hung in a drape of rotting flesh – the vultures had been in the process of removing this bit of her just now, the Elf assumed by the slickly gory mess made of it. _If she were the one watching us at the lake, then she would have had to be dead for weeks now,_ he reasoned, surprising himself with his easy acceptance of so odd a way of thinking. Prior to today, the Silvan Prince might have balked at believing in ghosts, for he had never seen one; and now, he had met both the ghost and its owner all in one day.

“Greenleaf?” the human prompted from behind him, his voice unusually tinny and small when he asked, “Is it her? The girl you saw?”

It seemed Aragorn had only just now pieced the two events together, which was understandable, being that the Adan had not actually seen the apparition and so had no comparison by which to conclude that this was the body of the spirit from earlier.

“Yes.” He knelt down beside the child’s body. He inspected her corpse carefully without touching it, which meant he only examined that of her which was exposed. “I think it is.”

Legolas had no fear of dead things. In the Mirkwood forest, death often seemed more commonplace than life, especially for the natural forest creatures. And as a warrior, he had often dealt death to Orcs, spiders, raiders, and other fell or vicious animals or beings. Even now, after having met the apparition cleaved from the body before him, the Prince felt no fear or disgust for it; no, Legolas felt an overwhelming sadness for the small Adan child. Whoever she was, she was too young and too small to have been of any harm to anyone, so her innocent life had been cut short too soon and for no good reason.

Aloud, he reported to Estel, “There is no obvious wound. No stab wound or gouge. I suppose a snake might have bitten her, or she might have eaten poisonous mushrooms or the like,” he supposed. He wasn’t sure why, but the Silvan desired to know why the child had died, and so he stood and turned, intending to ask Estel about the matter, for the healer would have better knowledge of such things than would he have.

The question upon his lips faltered. Right behind the Ranger stood the ghost of the very child over whom they pondered, and her pellucid arms were reaching out for Estel.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised Mirkwood to post something today, so here is... something! Thanks and enjoy. **And Mirkwood,** the haunt is coming for you to ask why you made your last chapter such an evil cliffhanger! Watch out for her!

Legolas reacted with the quickness of his kind. Without conscious thought, without a moment’s consideration for the consequences of his actions or for his own safety, and with nothing but fear and love for the Ranger motivating his movement, the Elf leapt forward, took hold of Estel’s shirt at the front of his chest, and yanked with all of his might. The cloth made a ripping sound as the momentum with which the Prince pulled it nearly broke the stitches in its seams, but his need to remove the human from the specter’s imminent touch precluded all thoughts of preserving the Ranger’s best traveling tunic, of the potential of hurting the Adan by forcing him to fall forwards, and of course, it overpowered his own instinct for survival, since he removed Estel from the way only to place himself in the girl-child’s path, instead.  

Perhaps it was seeing the blatant and consuming fear upon his lover’s face in that split second before he was jolted forward, or perhaps it was merely his surprise to be treated as such, but Aragorn did not fight the resolute pull of his lover’s strong hold in the least. With a startled oomph, the Adan fell onto his knees and then skidded along the cold, debris-strewn ground a short distance, stopping only when he caught himself with his hands – which he managed to do right before landing upon the rotting corpse of the small child. Aragorn’s falling form knocked into the Elf’s legs and caused Legolas to stumble, but ere the human had even skidded to a halt, the nimble Silvan had already recovered to stand in front of the downed Ranger, to protect him. He could not see the human behind him, but he heard the breathless Adan’s rustling in the leaves surrounding the child’s withering, bare legs, as the human struggled to rise from his knees to his feet.

“Greenleaf?” the Ranger whispered worriedly. Legolas assumed the man must have found his feet, for his voice grew nearer when he asked, “What is it? What is happening?”

Unwilling to turn around or take his eyes off the apparition, Legolas splayed his arms out to his sides to keep the human from trying to walk around him and hissed, “Stay back. She is here. Move no closer, Estel.”

In front of the Wood-Elf, the vapid haunt still stood with her arms out, while the fingers upon her hands were spread as if they sought to seize the Elf, though with her arms tilted upwards, it was almost as if she desired to grab hold of the Prince’s neck. Although the child’s leg twitched as if to step forward, she did not lift her foot nor did she actually stride; and yet, Legolas watched in dazed horror as she moved onward in a swift glide until she stood right before the Elf. Her transparent, greyish fingers were practically brushing against the laegel’s tunic over his heart. He longed to look down to where her hands neared his torso, to gauge whether she touched him or not, but the comburent, fiery red of her eyes held the Prince rapt, such that even had he tried, Legolas would not have been able to look away.

Once again, the slight crackle of leaves from behind him evinced to Legolas that the Ranger was moving nearer, though he did not try to walk beyond the barrier of the Prince’s spread out arms. He asked of the Elf, “Where? I still see nothing.”

“Directly in front of me,” the laegel disclosed to the human, beginning to say, “She – ”

Legolas quieted before he voiced his line of thought, before admitting to the Ranger how the apparition could have the Elf in her grasp if she took but a single, minute step forward, or leant towards the Prince just the least bit. If the haunt wanted to kill one of them, Legolas would offer himself up first and hope the being would be pacified by his death enough to leave the Ranger alone. If it wanted to kill them both, then still, he would gladly die and give Estel the chance to flee, even if that chance were slim. Not daring to move his torso an inch, lest it incite her to follow or react by touching him, the laegel fumbled back with one arm to feel for the Adan, who quickly found the Elf’s hand with his own.

Giving the Ranger’s hand a loving squeeze, thinking that this may very well be the last time he was ever able to touch his Adan lover, the Silvan demanded quietly, sternly, “Go, Estel. Run. She is fixated on me for the moment. I will distract her. Go,” he demanded again, his voice rising as his fear began to seep through his affected stoicism, “run, Estel.”

Aragorn asked the Elf in a huff of incredulous confusion, “What?” Adding his other hand to the first in holding onto the Elf’s hand, his grip so tight that the bones of the Prince’s fingers popped in their joints, the Ranger immediately began to dispute his lover’s instructions, “No. I am not – ”

“Run,” he acerbically growled at the Adan, mustering as much princely hauteur as possible so that he could to try to compel the Ranger into listening. Suddenly, he threw the human’s hands away from his own as if by doing so he could incite the Ranger into fleeing faster, as if his motion was a springboard by which the Adan could leap to further the distance between Aragorn and the fell apparition. “Go, Estel!” he demanded with desperation, no longer able to hide the panic he felt and so nearly shrieking his words. “Now. Run!”

“Not without you,” Estel replied without indecision, but with only fervent, calm determination. All the Elf wanted was for his human lover to be well, but the human wanted the same for his Elven lover, of course, and the Ranger would never run to save his own life only to let the Prince die for him. Estel’s voice grew even louder as he came to stand right behind the Prince, evincing that he would not be swayed. “If we run, we run together… or not at all, Greenleaf. I go nowhere without you.”

Legolas knew at once that the human would not be convinced to do otherwise. “Then we may both die very soon,” he rued with a sigh, although the Wood-Elf comforted himself with the thought that if the two of them died, at least he would not have to watch his beloved Ranger’s death, as it was likely he would die first since he was first in line for the haunt’s attentions. He also held a glimmer of hope that if the specter attacked, Estel might still have the chance to flee. “She stands before me, her hands out, and could have hold of me effortlessly, should she desire to,” he told the Adan softly, as if the haunt wouldn’t be able to hear, although truly, the Elf had no idea if the being could hear them or not, or if she even cared what they said.

“Then why do we stand here, waiting for her to grab us?” the man asked the Elf, his hushed voice coming almost next to the Prince’s ear. Indeed, the Wood-Elf soon felt the press of the Ranger’s broad and hard chest against his shoulder blade, by his quiver, which was a sensation that with its familiarity reassured the increasingly strained laegel in this unfamiliar situation. “Let us both flee.”

Before Legolas could respond by telling Estel that he would rather not provoke the specter into acting when she was currently curiously tranquil, Aragorn unexpectedly grabbed hold of the waist of the Elf’s trousers and yanked him backwards a step, and then another. For each step back that the Ranger pulled the Elf, the apparition glided forward in response. He nearly tripped over the legs of the corpse underfoot. For some reason, the feeling of the dead child’s limbs brushing against his boots broke the Prince’s mesmerization though it did not break his gaze from the haunt’s enthralling stare; however, it spurred into action the Silvan’s millennia of experience in warfare, and in a flash of burnished metal too quick for most people to see, Legolas pulled free his long knife from its sheath at his waist. He was aware that the blade would be of little to no use against the child-like form before him, but instinct had caused him to pull his weapon, regardless. Besides, by the Prince’s thinking, an Elven warrior ought to die with his or her weapon in hand, and not cowering in fear.

“Estel, no,” he protested quickly when he felt the man’s hand tighten in the waist of his trousers and thought the human might drag him backwards yet again.

To his utter surprise, the ghost stopped her advance with her fiery eyes upon the moonlit shine of the Silvan’s blade. Slowly, the whispery being lowered her arms, her hands curled into tight, small fists at her sides, and she then dropped her head, which broke the sway her scorching regard held over the Elf’s gaze; and yet, he still felt enthralled by her proximate presence and this captivation only seemed to grow stronger the longer he stood there before her. A dissonant humming began in his mind and an ache began behind his eyes, both of which felt remote to him, as if there was something inside his skull causing these peculiar sensations. Behind him, Estel was now speaking again. The Ranger’s susurrations hinted at his desire for them to run, if they would, but the Prince could not seem to concentrate on his lover’s words – just his tone of voice – which was all Legolas needed to hear to know the human was panicked.

 _What is this?_ he asked himself as an odd, trancelike miasma overtook his rational mind.

Unwilling but unable to fight against it, Legolas closed his eyes in an exaggerated, slow manner; the moment he had them shut, he expected to see what ought to have been nothing but the darkness behind his lids, but instead, the Prince felt as if his eyes were still open, though what was before him now was not the creek side, the dimming woods, and the terrifying specter of a murdered human child. He now saw a washed out, hazy vision of the broad side of a black barn in brilliant morning light, an older man wearing filthy work clothes bearing a cheerful, mostly toothless grin, who was looking down at him, his dirt stained hand patting what might have been the top of the Elf’s head, had Legolas been half his height.

Again, the Silvan wondered, _What is this?_

He held his hand out, though it was neither his arm nor his hand that he saw – nor was it his volition to have moved it. No, to the Prince’s stilted and disconcerted dismay, it was a thin, pale, childish arm coming from the side of his body where his own muscled and longer arm ought to have been connected. Try though he did to move this limb, it did not obey him, and another thin, childish arm rose from the other side of what he thought to be his body, until both arms were now held out towards the merry Adan man.

_What am I seeing? Is this some vision from her? Is this what she sees? Or what she wants me to see?_

The grizzled old human took a step closer to the Elf, held his own arms out and down to Legolas, and then seemed to sweep up the Elf inside his strong limbs, as if he were being picked up. The sight of a barn, a field of barley, several goats and a cow, and a squat, roughhewn, but well-loved house whirled around him in a dizzying blur, as though he were being twirled around while in the embrace of the Adan in whose arms he was now held.

 _This is home,_ the Prince realized, though what caused him to think this was beyond his capacity to clarify. To the careworn Wood-Elf, he felt to be a small and innocent child being held by his doting father. _This is what it feels like to be home._

In his many years since advancing past childhood, he had often missed the simple pleasure of being swept up in his Ada’s arms. The Elvenking was once wont to spinning his son around in circles, making the young Prince giggle riotously as the woods or halls of their home rotated around them. Thranduil would then sit Legolas upon his feet and laugh along with his Elfling when the Princeling staggered in dizzied amusement. In those moments and others like them, the laegel had always felt loved, cherished, and safe. To feel this again caused a soundless whimper of untold joy to escape the Prince, though it was soon followed by utmost anguish, for this was not his reminiscence, not his father, and the child whose eyes through which he was seeing this loving memory would never be held or cherished by her Ada ever again. His nearly inaudible moan became a strangled cry of discomfort at the lancing sorrow this realization brought to him.

 _Home. Her father. She has lost all of this. She is nothing more than a wayward child, wandering the forest,_ the Prince contemplated ere he was abruptly pulled from his appropriated thoughts.

Frightened by his Elven lover’s wail, thinking the laegel to be crying out in pain or fear, Aragorn reacted at once to try to move the Prince away from what to him was invisible but very real danger. When Estel’s hand yanked upon the laegel’s waist to try to remove him from harm’s way, the Wood-Elf stood firm and did not stumble back as he had earlier. Although he had thought his eyes open and the obscure vision of the barn and Adan man a mirage before him, when his eyes flew open in surprise at Aragorn’s actions, the strange image was gone.

This morning, the child-like being had not moved nor spoken, but this evening, not only had she walked towards the pair with her hands and arms out, she had somehow provided for Legolas an insight into her bleak and suffering soul. The specter currently had her face turned down, which gave her the appearance of a child being reproached – and perhaps she did feel that way, since the Elf had pulled his long knife upon her. Indeed, as Legolas watched, the apparition wrapped her arms around her middle as if she were cold or feeling pains of hunger in her belly – or as though she were hugging herself for consolation.

He had little reason to conclude so, but the Elda thought, _This morning, it was as if she were surprised I could see her. She stood still as if she thought she might hide from view. Like how a rabbit might be silent and still when found in the open, too afraid to run in the hopes that immobility will protect it from being noticed. And now, she knows I can see her, and so does not hide. It is almost as if she seeks something from me, though it could very well be our lives she seeks._ There was something significant in this that the laegel wished to ponder, but so overwhelmed with dread was he still that Legolas could not decipher the meaning behind this observation; at least, not until he thought of the vision she had shown him, of her holding her arms up and out to the older man, who had taken her in his own, where she felt adored and protected. _Wandering the forest, frightened of us because we are strangers, but so bereft and alone is her soul that she pursues comfort from the only two people whom she has likely seen in weeks – or the only ones who even know she exists._ Hesitant but no less frightening, the spirit before him lifted her head, her pale hair finally falling completely away from her face so that the Prince could see her fine, blameless, and forlorn features. She was a pretty little thing – devilish red eyes notwithstanding – and the Elf’s heart ached to think of the gnawed upon and decaying state of her rotting corpse underfoot.

“Greenleaf, what is it doing?” the Ranger insisted from behind the reticent, motionless Elf, his fingers now entwined in the leather straps holding the Prince’s quiver to his torso. At the least provocation, Aragorn would do as Legolas had done earlier – that is, yank the Silvan from harm’s way to protect the Elf with his own life. He added by asking, “And where is it?”

“ _She_ , meleth nin,” he absently corrected the Ranger. “It is a she, and she is still standing right before us.”

An owl hooted in the distance. Wildlife buzzed, scampered, and called out in the natural ways of the woods. The sun was set and the moon barely a waxing sliver in the sky. For every living thing in the clearing by the creek in that moment, nothing was amiss; for Legolas, and thus Estel by extension, the events occurring were surreal beyond their comprehension.

“Does she speak? Does she move?” the human asked rapidly. As much as Legolas was frightened, the Prince appreciated that the Adan must be even more terrified, for he could not even see the thing that might soon kill them. “Should we run, Greenleaf, since she only stands there?”

The Elf’s heart took a moment to swell again with affectionate gratitude that his Adan lover believed him still, and he briefly smiled his happiness, of which the specter before him seemed to take notice. Of course, having now seen the dead child’s body, which the Elf had described nearly perfectly from having seen her haunt, Estel would have needed a good explanation for how the Prince could have known of the appearance of this decaying corpse long before they found it. Soon enough, though, Legolas’ relieved joy returned to fear when the specter’s translucent body twitched forward. Had her arms still been outstretched, her immaterial fingers would have pierced the laegel’s chest. As it were, though, her awkward move towards him shifted her short, vapid body right into the Elf’s outthrust long knife. He watched in horror as the child was pierced upon the sharpened blade. She did not cry out, did not recoil, nor did she even seem to detect that the Prince’s long knife was sticking out through her side and into the cooling evening air behind her.

Legolas had doubted their weapons would have any effect on the specter anyway, but now he had proof. Moving in what he hoped was a measured, nonthreatening way, the Prince withdrew his blade from her body as if it were truly stuck in her nonexistent flesh, ere he slid his long knife back into its sheath, judging, _She was reaching out for Estel and then me until I unthinkingly pulled my blade. Surely, she cannot be harmed by it; and yet, perhaps she was scared by it._ The moment that he removed his hand from the haft of his long knife, the child-like being affixed her inflamed, rubicund eyes upon the Prince’s cerulean orbs once again. Although she appeared little different from before and the sensitive laegel could still sense the malevolence emanating from her, he considered that the child herself might not be evil, though he could not understand why he believed this.

Once more, Legolas felt something flitting at the corners of his mind, fluttering against the very edges of his awareness – something foreign. He closed his eyes briefly to try to shut out the alien essence but swiftly opened them when he realized that closing his eyes might bring about another vivid imagining spawned from the ghost’s being. After months of listening to the scar’s insulting, critical, hateful voice, the Elf had plenty of experience dealing with strange vociferations inside his mind, but this was no voice. No, this was a bewilderingly simple array of feelings, and each one acutely bombarded his empathetic faer, though his mind could not concentrate upon any one feeling or its source.

Confusion, fear, pain, cold, hunger, longing, loneliness, and homesickness – over and over, he felt these emotions in a rapid fire, as if his chest were being struck by arrow after arrow and each one piercing to the heart of him. Even with his eyes open, the image of the ragged, elder Adan whom he had seen before stuck inside his head – the more he thought of that man, the more vivid the emotions became, until Legolas could no longer perceive where his own fear and desolation ended and hers began.

“Talk to me, Legolas, before I start dragging you away from here,” the Ranger warned hollowly. While Estel could easily pick up the Elf and begin running, the Adan knew as well as did Legolas that there was nowhere to run to be safe since Aragorn could not tell from what they would be running. This knowledge did little to appease his fear, of course, and in typical Estel fashion, his fear became anger. The Ranger railed in disquieted irritation at his lover’s reticence, “What is happening?”

“She is lost,” he told the man, not realizing what he meant to say until he heard himself say it, but once hearing it, he knew it to be true. “She is lost and alone.”

The haunt’s head tilted slightly to the side, giving the Elf the impression that she was listening to what he told Aragorn. She lifted her small, clenched fist. She straightened out her arm until she was reaching out towards Legolas again, ere she relaxed her fingers, spread them, and took a motionless step forward, reaching for the Elf with a slight, hopeful smile curling at the corners of her mouth. In surprise, the Elf’s whole body flinched and he nearly bounded backwards to avoid the haunt; his ostensible startlement provoked the confused Ranger into reacting against the threat which he could not even see, and by his hold of the straps to Legolas’ quiver, Estel once more jerked the Silvan Prince back a step.

With what appeared to Legolas to be a hesitant, shy smile, the child-sized being again cleared the space between her and the laegel, and with both her arms out now, the Silvan had only to reach out to take her hands or to lift her up and swing her around as had her father, to give her the illusion of comfort and safety that her disoriented, confused soul desired. He felt compelled to do so for reasons beyond his grasp, and so lifted his arms out as she had hers lifted, and then tried to take a step forward so that his own pale, long, and strong fingers would touch the apparition’s translucent, short, and weak fingers. With vividness, Legolas recalled how he had felt to be held and cared for in those short moments when his father had taken the time to show his son his love rather than his inexplicable anger, and knowing how much the lacking of such affection hurt, the Elf longed to soothe the child by doing as she desired – by picking her up and swinging her around, by making her laugh, by showing her that she was not alone or lost.

To the Prince’s consternation, Aragorn crudely hauled Legolas backwards by the straps of his quiver, which yanked the Elf off his feet and thus away from the haunt. Legolas stumbled; the Ranger caught the laegel around the waist and wrenched his body further back with him, both of them carelessly kicking the legs of the corpse underfoot.

“No, Estel, wait,” he called out, though by then, both Elf and Adan were on the forest’s floor, their bodies entangled and neither capable of rising quickly.

Even before he got to his feet, Legolas apprehended that his mind felt emptied of her presence, his faer felt relieved of her distress. Not caring that he was kicking the Ranger in his effort to disentangle his legs from the human’s limbs, Legolas finally managed to climb to his knees ere he scrambled back to his feet. At once, the Wood-Elf spun around in circles, the forest and Ranger and creek all whirling images, as he sought the ghostly apparition in the darkening woods around them.

But the phantom Adan child was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

At first, his eyes wildly and desperately looking around them, the Elf appeared to Estel like a spinning top, but eventually, the laegel’s whirling slowed until he stopped to scowl at Estel, who was just now rising from the ground. Legolas accused heatedly, “You frightened her away.”

Estel had no idea what had happened, what had almost happened, or what was happening now. _She is gone, at least. Thank Eru for that,_ he tetchily rejoiced to himself, since Legolas did not seem happy about the haunt’s disappearance. The moment he was on his feet, the Ranger strode quickly to the Elf and bruisingly grabbed his lover’s arm; he kept this hand upon the Prince with no intention of letting go willingly. Even knowing the specter was gone did not relieve him of his worry that the Prince might act irrationally again, and thereby endanger his life as he had moments before. He stared in bafflement at his lover, who had taken to searching the woods around them once more, though this time he stood still, at least, so Estel was not dragged in circles with him.

In absentminded confusion, the human watched his lover. The Ranger reached behind him with his free hand to rub at a strangely cold area upon his lower back. It felt as if part of his skin was numb – like how one’s flesh would feel from being exposed to the frigid wind for too long. Though autumn was upon them, he wore his tunic and the wind was not cold enough to have caused this sensation. Even more strangely, these spots were stippled across his lower back, as if icy drops of water had frozen upon his skin. As he tried to massage away the anomalously cold areas, the Ranger wondered at the Elf’s odd behavior.

“You sound as if you would rather she stayed,” he asked confoundedly. Since he had been unable to see the apparition, the Ranger marveled at what had occurred to cause the Prince’s sudden change in attitude towards the haunt. “Isn’t it a good thing that she was frightened away? Although how I managed to frighten her, I don’t understand.”

_Not that I understand any of this,_ he added to himself. If he’d had any lingering doubts about whether the Elf hallucinated or not, they were appeased now. There was no feasible reason for the Wood-Elf to have suffered a delusion of a young, blonde Adan child wearing sackcloth clothing, and then for them to find the body of an Adan child fitting that exact description. His lover was talented in many ways, but soothsaying was not one of them, though the Ranger now wondered if seeing the dead might be the Elf’s new talent.

With a jerk of his arm – a tug that hurt the Ranger’s fingers as they were forced to release the Elf and likely hurt the Elf as Estel’s grasping digits dug into the Prince’s upper arm in his attempt to retain his hold – the upset Wood-Elf moved away from Estel hurriedly. The Silvan first picked up his bow from where it had fallen from its catch during their tumble to the ground, replaced it upon his person, and then adjusted his twisted quiver. With a practiced motion from years of experience as an archer, Legolas inspected by mere touch whether the quiver’s arrows were still intact.

With all this completed, the Prince rounded upon the man to complain with inexplicable bitterness, “Why did you do that? You should not have interfered.”

Startled by the laegel’s anger for him, he stepped closer to the Elf, to be prepared to grab Legolas if need be, and replied with similar irritation, “Why did I do what? Why did I pull you away from her?”

When the Elf nodded, Aragorn continued, “You said not to touch her, Greenleaf. You said she seemed to consume the light and life of the forest. And yet, now you rail at me for keeping you from touching her?” The human spat out in a huff of frustration and fear, “What is wrong with you? Have you lost your wits? You were reaching for her. What was I supposed to do? Stand here and watch you die because you were fool enough to welcome her with open arms? And quite literally at that!”

Immediately, the Ranger regretted his unmeant, harsh words, though he did not apologize, for his sentiment was very much intended. Legolas stopped scanning the forest around them and gave his human lover a scathing glare that promised further argument. But then, the Elf tempered his anger by taking in and holding a deep inhalation; however, the reek of the corpse beside him caused the Prince to release his breath in a rush. Closing his eyes forcefully, the Silvan shook his head somewhat and thought better of saying whatever cruel, vindictive retaliation that almost escaped him.

Legolas bowed his head. “You are right. I am a fool. I’m not sure what I was thinking,”the laegel reproved himself. “I apologize, meleth nin, for frightening you. It is only…”

The Elf’s pause made the Ranger unreservedly anxious for some reason. Seeing Legolas reaching out for the haunt had frightened the Adan immeasurably. To lose the Elf from injury or sorrow was horrible enough a thought, but to imagine losing Legolas from suicide was unfathomable to the Adan – and that was just what it had felt like in that moment when he had realized what the Elf was doing, for the man had been certain that he would see his Greenleaf die, while never once seeing the thing to cause it. He had only Legolas’ information to go by, after all, and the Prince claimed the apparition was fearsomely dangerous, so there had been no question in Estel’s mind that the Elf was reaching out for his own demise.

“It is only that she seemed different this time,” the laegel finally finished. Under Aragorn’s watchful gaze, Legolas’ hand crept up his belly and to his chest, where it might have pestered the ache of his struggling faer, had the Silvan not suddenly realized what he was doing and thus stopped to prevent showing Aragorn how his sorrow vexed him. Why the Prince’s grief was suddenly pestering him was unclear to the Ranger, as well. Legolas clutched the tunic at his side to keep his hand away from his aching chest. “I felt sorry for her.”

“You make no sense, Greenleaf. You said this morning and all day that she is evil, forced us to flee through the forest at breakneck speed, and now you say she is a thing to be pitied. I am tired of this evasion and of not understanding what is occurring,” the human complained, thinking too late that he ought not to exacerbate the Wood-Elf’s guilt. Aragorn could not maintain his anger when faced with his Elven lover’s distress, for he felt the Silvan’s grief as acutely as if it were his own grief. His efforts to lessen his antagonism were useless, for the Silvan still wore a wounded expression, and though Legolas turned away from Estel in the attempt to hide his action, Aragorn knew when he saw Legolas release the cloth of his tunic at his side that the Elf was now rubbing his tender chest.

Under the guise of offering the Elf a drink, Aragorn strode forward to stand beside Legolas, though what he truly wanted was to offer his presence for whatever comfort the Prince might derive from it. By the time the human stood beside the Elf, Legolas had lowered his hand from his chest. The Ranger untied the waterskin upon his belt, uncapped it, and handed it to the Prince, who took it and drank without question. When the laegel passed it back to him, the Ranger drank heavily from the skin, as well. Despite his best effort to quell his mounting anger, he was finding it difficult to remain calm when the Wood-Elf had yet to answer him and seemed reluctant to do so. He watched the Prince look out into the forest and debated what he could say or do to force the Elf into explaining.

_He likely doesn’t even understand what is happening, but surely, he knows more than do I,_ the human criticized. So exasperated was he that his fingers fumbled at retying the waterskin upon his belt; with a curse of aggravation, the Ranger flung the nearly empty skin to the ground, just to release some of his pent up anger.

The walloping sound it made upon hitting the debris strewn forest floor caused Legolas to jump slightly, since the Elf had been lost in his own thoughts and ignoring the Adan. Wordlessly, dutifully, Legolas bent over to retrieve the skin and took over the task of tying it in its place upon the Ranger’s belt. He did all of this without looking at his Adan lover, for the Prince did not want to see Aragorn’s anger for him. Estel was not accustomed to feeling such fury towards Legolas; indeed, it irritated him further that the Prince merely accepted the Ranger’s small tantrum, for it made Estel feel like Thranduil, who dished out his unwarranted rage while the undeserving Thranduilion quietly received it.

_If he doesn’t start talking, I will thrash the answers from him,_ he threatened. He promptly felt guilty for even suggesting beating his lover, even if only to himself, and now criticized, _First a tantrum and now threats of violence – I grow more and more like Thranduil by the second_. He would never hit the Prince; just thinking such a thing made his anger for the Elf diminish, though his anger for himself mounted. By then, however, the Prince had collected his thoughts and so tried to explain.

“She appeared evil, she felt evil, but she looked as if perhaps she were not evil herself.” Legolas ambled the short distance to where the child’s corpse laid upon the ground. He looked down at her, the familiar melancholy that the Adan had observed so often these past few months – the sadness Aragorn was so weary of seeing upon his lover’s face – was just now as evident as ever it had been, while the Elf viewed the decaying body to which the haunt belonged. Legolas spared a furtive glance at the Ranger, took a breath as if to continue speaking, but the human’s ireful face quieted the Prince. Legolas’ mouth snapped shut and he turned away.

_He is hiding something from me,_ the Adan knew at once.

As much as the Ranger was weary of seeing his lover’s unhappiness, he was just as weary of this perpetual battle of wills with the Elf. From when first he had met the Woodland Prince years ago, even when the human was a child, Estel had always been able to perceive the ever-present sorrow lingering in the Silvan’s vibrant blue eyes, the worry in the set of his brow, the anxiety in how he carried himself, and could note the minutest of reactions to reminders of Legolas’ shame and sorrow – such as the mere mention of Thranduil’s name, which brought with it a torrent of whelmingly depressing memories for the Prince. For so long had the Adan studied the Elf – even before ever considering in his most clandestine dreams that he and the Prince might become lovers – that now that the two were mated, even if not by ceremony, Aragorn could usually read the Elf like one might read a book. He had even grown more practiced at this than were the twins and Elrond, though he was still not as adept as was Kalin. Legolas’ refusal to look him in the eye and his reluctance to impart the details of what had transpired with the haunt evinced to the Ranger all he needed to know; that is, Legolas was hiding the most damning details of his encounter with the apparition.

_He has seen something or knows something and does not wish to worry me over it. And whatever it is he hides, it is likely the reason behind his nearly embracing his own death by trying to embrace the specter. Was he enthralled by it? Was he welcoming his own death to save me? Did it speak to him?_ he asked himself, and having no answer for these pressing and pertinent questions, felt his temper begin to flare again.

It burned the Ranger to have his lover keep secrets from him, even though Estel was certain Legolas likely did it as a means of either protecting the Adan or keeping the Adan from being burdened by the knowledge. Moreover, Aragorn did not like being cossetted any more than did Legolas, and so did not appreciate being kept in the dark under the pretense of it being for his own good. Already, he was ignorant of the spectacle of the haunt, since he could not see it, and being kept ignorant of what it had done or said to Legolas only added insult to injury. When the silence of the darkening, slowly calming forest began to wear upon the Adan’s nerves, when he considered admitting to Legolas that he knew the Elf was being elusive, Aragorn fortuitously recalled his conversation with Thranduil, and thus recalled his promise to the Elvenking not to treat the Prince like a child.

_I cannot badger him into telling me. He will only pull away even further. Nor am I his father, to fuss and rant at him until he breaks down and tells me what I want to hear._

Choosing to ignore the laegel’s lapse and his secretiveness for the nonce, the Ranger replied, “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps she is not evil. Her intention might not be to kill us, Greenleaf, but that doesn’t mean she won’t, whether she desires to or not. We should not be lax in our vigilance of her just because she looks like a child,” the Ranger tried to reason with the Elf, though without all the facts, it was hard to find solid ground for this argument, for he had no clue as to what had caused Legolas to reach out for the haunt.

As a peace offering of sorts, Aragorn took hold of the Wood-Elf’s hand, brought it to his lips, and one by one kissed the knuckles of his lover’s strong fingers. While doing so, the Ranger thought of how moments ago Legolas had thrown away the man’s hand when telling the human to flee – as if he had truly thought Aragorn would willingly save himself and leave the Elf to die.

“You are right,” the Silvan said for a second time. Estel noted how the Prince’s hand shook when Aragorn raised it to his bearded cheek. In natural devotement to which the Adan would never grow accustomed or of which he would never take for granted, the Elf responded by cupping the human’s jaw and giving him a loving smile. The Prince deflected in what Aragorn knew bordered upon a lie in its mendacious simplicity, “I was confused, Estel. I know you cannot see her, so you cannot understand – her very presence is muddling. But you are right,” the Silvan repeated yet again as he moved closer to the Adan, his hand still cupping the Ranger’s bewhiskered jaw, which he used to incite the man into leaning forward. Legolas leant forward as well and placed a chaste kiss upon the Adan’s lips. Suddenly, the Wood-Elf grasped the human’s chin firmly and he pulled back to see the man’s eyes, his forgotten fear relit by a new comburent worry.

“She did not touch you, did she, Estel? Before I pulled you away?” the laegel asked with abrupt remembrance of how close his lover had come to being engulfed within the specter’s dimness. The Ranger thought about his answer, which caused the harried Elf to repeat immediately because of the short hesitation the man made, “Estel? Did you she touch you?”

“I’m not certain. I couldn’t see her,” he reminded the Wood-Elf. As he considered the Silvan’s query, Aragorn once more twisted his right arm behind his back and rubbed at the numbed places upon his skin. Not willing to upset the Silvan and despite not truly knowing the answer, the human assured with his lover’s best interest at heart, “If it is as you say, and she seems to sap life from that which is around her, then I suppose she did not. I am still alive, aren’t I?” he joked weakly.

Legolas was not amused by the human’s poorly timed jest; he did not laugh or smile, but only gave the Adan a dour glare in response to Estel’s flippancy. With suspicion, the Woodland Prince watched Aragorn chafe at his back, such that upon noticing how Legolas observed him, the Ranger dropped his arm to his side and explained, “Just speaking of it is making my skin crawl and itch.”

The thought of her touching him was indeed making him feel uncomfortable, so it was no lie except in that he omitted what he supposed caused his back to feel odd – right before Legolas had pulled the Ranger to the ground, the Adan had felt coldness upon the skin of his lower back, as if someone were pressing their ice-cold fingertips to his flesh. Not wanting the laegel to worry over it, however, Estel did not explicate further. He counted himself lucky when the Prince’s misgiving gave way to relief. Legolas looked back to the child’s corpse and said, “Trust me. If you could see her, your skin might crawl right off your back to escape her touch, so evil does she seem to be.”

_And now I am a hypocrite. I have stood here growing angry with Greenleaf for keeping his secrets while keeping my own._ However, being that the Ranger truly did not believe the haunt had hurt him, but rather that her presence and his own imagination was the cause of the benumbed spots upon his lower back, he did not think much more of it, for it was as he had just told the Elf – had the haunt touched him, he thought he would surely be suffering something worse than a few algid spots upon his skin.

Shaking his head in perplexity, the Silvan looked down to the child’s body and rued as if to himself, “But as I said, I don’t think she is some vile or wretched ghost, out to harm anyone. She looked so afraid, so lost. If she is of any danger to anyone, I don’t think it would be on purpose.”

It was hard to reconcile the Elf’s warning with his actions, for even though he had all this day led them in a hasty flight away from the threat of the apparition, the Prince had also reached out for the haunt, belying his own assertion that the child’s mere aura was capable of depriving the living of their very existence. Aragorn moved closer to the Silvan, who was dropping to his knees beside the child’s corpse, and he followed suit in kneeling beside the girl. Even as he reminded himself of his promise to Thranduil and of his own knowledge that pressing the Elf for answers would only drive the obstinate Silvan into silence, the Ranger could not help himself. He asked, “Why, Greenleaf? Why did you reach out for her?”

In the pale light of the moon, which was obscured behind high and straggly clouds, the child’s blond hair looked like dirty ribbons of silver. Legolas was pushing the corpse’s tangled hair away from her savaged face. To see his lover treat the dead child with such care was telling in and of itself, for while he would expect Legolas to be respectful of the young Adan girl’s body, the Elf seemed almost affectionate in how he handled her. Such a complete turnabout from terror of her to sympathy for her needed explanation.

Looking up from the corpse, Legolas gave a plaintive and fretful frown. Abruptly, the Prince rested his chin upon his bent knees and wrapped his arms around his legs. “You already think I have lost my wits, Estel. Why would I give you more reason to believe it true?”

The human stopped breathing and his mouth fell open, while his heart seemed to leap against the confines of his ribcage, as if it desired to flee in response to the utter panic the Prince’s declaration caused him. He started to argue against his lover’s statement but soon realized he had said that very thing only moments ago – he had asked the Elf if Legolas had lost his wits. While said in anger, anger was no excuse for his having said it, especially after the events of the last several months, wherein the Wood-Elf had suffered so greatly from sorrow that his faer, in a futile attempt to survive for his beloved Ranger, had distanced itself from its constricting grief by embodying this grief in the flesh of the Elf’s marred thigh. During this time of his acute suffering, the laegel had often felt mad, believed others to think him mad, and had been told he was mad by his father. The Elf had hallucinated Estel in the cave’s pit, which Legolas had deemed to be evidence of his madness – an opinion with which the Elvenking agreed. Even this morning, when Estel had disbelieved the Prince and thought him to be imagining the haunt, in essence, Aragorn had been treating the Wood-Elf as if he had lost his wits.

Estel could find nothing suitable to say in response. He was ashamed of himself, certainly, but a simple apology would not do. _You damned fool,_ he called himself, scowling and wishing he could take back his words from earlier.

If Legolas noticed any of his lover’s silent self-deprecation during this brief silence, he did not show it, for his gaze had returned to and stayed upon the Adan girl. His touch light and warm, the Elf began sweeping the leaves away from her body. “She was reaching out to me,” the Prince explicated with reluctance. “I saw something. It might have been one of her memories, or perhaps it was merely a wish of hers. As if I were in her body, I saw an older human, who smiled at her, who picked her up and swung her around playfully. That was what she wanted, Estel… to be consoled. I could feel her isolation, her fear. It was familiar to me – a lonely child seeking love and affection, but having no one to whom to turn for comfort.”

At first, the human thought the Elf spoke of him, of the Ranger when he was just a boy, and of how the Prince had become his first true friend outside his twin brothers, for the Wood-Elf had fulfilled for the Adan his need for acceptance and affection from someone whom he felt chose to be his friend, rather than was compelled into it by familial ties – even fostered ones. But though Aragorn had often felt out of place amongst the Imladrians, he had never been lonely or felt unloved, for the twins and his Ada had always made Estel feel as if he were part of their family. So it was then Aragorn understood that Legolas spoke of himself. It was hard for the Ranger to think of the Prince as a child. He knew little of the Silvan’s Elfling years except stories involving the twins, and those tales were always of lighthearted mischief. And yet, knowing Thranduil as he did, Estel could picture just how lonely and frightened the young Woodland Prince must have been at times with the Elvenking as his only family. His mother had died, his father despised him for no good reason and often mistreated him, as a Prince Legolas was expected to show no weakness even amongst his friends – the Ranger suddenly realized how awful his lover’s childhood must have been at times, how isolated and comfortless.

“It was mere instinct, not madness,” the Prince quietly tried to convince the Ranger. Having removed most of the leaves from around the corpse, Legolas now straightened her moldering dress so that it covered her bare and wasted legs. “She was a child suffering, and having felt before just as she felt, I held my arms out to her, to offer her what no one offered me when I was her age and felt similarly,” he said with a sigh, though Legolas then snickered a time or two, smiling at the memory as he clarified, “Well, no one except Kalin. He was always mindful of keeping up decorum, so he was never outright affectionate, but in his own way, he was always there for me when I was younger, just as he is now.”

Again, Estel found himself speechless. Perhaps it was noble or kind of Legolas to have desired to provide solace to the Adan girl’s spirit, but it was not wise. More disturbingly to the human, the haunt had formed a connection to the Elf. Legolas could see her and she had apparently shared an illusion with the Silvan. The Prince’s explanation was heart wrenching and unsettling, and it also raised more questions than it had answered. Estel needed time to think of this.

One thing he noticed now, however, was that all day the Elf had been on the lookout for the specter, but he no longer seemed intent on keeping watch for her. _Can he discern that she is gone even without seeing her? What has tied them together? And can we be rid of it?_ he asked himself, but had no answers. Soon, Legolas was speaking and he drew the Ranger away from his vexed worry.

“What should we do with her body? I cannot, in good conscience, leave it here for the vultures to finish eating,” his lover told him with a look of warning, as if ready to argue the matter.

But the Ranger no more wanted to abandon the dead child’s body to the carrion birds than did Legolas. “We cannot burn her body. The woods are too dry. We might start a fire in the forest, and besides, I personally do not wish to stick around long enough for her to finish burning to see that the fire goes out,” he reasoned, thinking of the pungent smell of burning human flesh, a scent he had smelled before and one which he was not eager to smell again. “As close as she is to this farm, she may have lived upon it, although why her corpse lies here if her people live nearby, I could not guess, unless they have perished, as well.”

“We have no spades or shovels, and the ground is too rocky to dig for a grave,” the Elf thought aloud. Legolas glanced about them as if he could find an answer from the forest floor. “And unless her people are dead, as you say, then burying her would deprive them of grieving over her. Although I doubt they would want to see her as she is. But let us take her to the nearest villagers, at least.” Kneeling down beside the child’s body, the Elf gingerly began to gather the girl’s wayward limbs to her person. “I will carry her. If need be, we can find some place to store her body until we can inform her people of her whereabouts – a barn, a shed, or something suitable.”

Tied in rolls to the underside of the Ranger’s satchel were the thick blankets they used for their shared bedroll and for covers. As unwilling as the human was to lose one, since winter was soon to be upon them, the Adan pulled the shabbier, thinnest of the blankets free and unfurled it out over the girl’s small form. With the Prince’s help and using the blanket itself to grab her decaying arms and legs, they wrapped the dead child within the cloth, taking especial care to treat her body with the respect one would normally use in handling the corpse of a loved one, though they did not know her. The smell of her was lessened only slightly by the cloth, but Legolas did not balk in picking up the bundled corpse.

“The village itself cannot be more than a couple of hours walk from here, but I think the farmland to which this field belongs must be nearer than that.” Aragorn adjusted the blanket to keep it from coming loose from around the corpse and gave his Elven lover a glum smile. “You won’t have to carry her long.”

“I do not mind. Walk in front of me, Estel, and slightly off to the side,” the Prince demanded softly, specifically, and nodded his head for the human to begin. “But not too far ahead and not too quickly. I don’t feel her watching us for now, but I don’t know that I will should she come back.”

He knew what the Elf wanted; Legolas did not want the apparition to sneak up on them again. If Aragorn walked before but not directly in front of the Elf, Legolas would still be able to keep watch of what was ahead of them in search for the specter, so long as the human kept a pace slow enough that the Prince had time to react to the danger should it appear before them. And if the apparition appeared behind them, well, Legolas would be the one to first encounter it this time. As much as he didn’t like it, the Ranger nodded his head in agreement. He had little choice. And yet, while Legolas kept watch for the girl-child’s ghost, the human would keep watch over the laegel. He didn’t like it a bit how his lover had reached out for the specter.

Estel thought as Legolas had thought earlier in wondering, _She appears to have died weeks ago – which is around how long we stayed at the lake, with Greenleaf claiming that we were being watched._

He reconsidered of what he and Legolas spoke a short while ago. _How has she lain here this whole time and not been found? If her people are dead, then would not the villagers have found her people, at least, and come looking for her, as well?_

From what he remembered of the small settlement, the people there were poor. They had barely a village at all, by his reckoning. This area was sparsely populated and for that reason, the people who lived in it were necessarily tightknit. They depended upon each other greatly for food, goods, and safety. While bandits and thieves might make easy prey of small settlements such as the one to which they walked, the people there had little worth taking, so were often ignored. They subsisted on only that for which they could barter with their crops. Not even Orcs typically pestered this particular settlement because they were far enough from any haven in which the sun-hating creatures could hide, and while farmers, the people here were accustomed to living hard and fighting for that which they loved – their lands, their crops, and most importantly, their people. Besides which, as Chieftain of the Dúnedain, Aragorn knew that his fellow Rangers made frequent passes through this particular region, often rousting out potential dangers.

He turned back to look at Legolas and was surprised to note that although the Prince retained his stout vigilance, he no longer appeared as terrorized as he had before seeing the haunt a second time. He paused, having walked a little too far ahead of Legolas, so that the Elf could catch up, and as he did so, he saw how the Prince shifted the bundled corpse in his arms, taking care to adjust the body as if Legolas carried a living being, as if the girl child could feel discomfort or pain.

_I do not like this,_ the Ranger complained, wishing that his father or brothers were here. _How can I help Greenleaf if I cannot even see what it is that haunts him?_

His mind lost in the many questions the day had raised, the human began rubbing at the flesh of his lower back, where the sensation of cold was spreading upon his skin.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been tempted to just delete this story and pretend like it doesn't exist. If I happen to get fed up and do something drastic like that, I will leave the first smutty chapter and pretend that it is the epilogue of the "Induration" series.

Dawn neared.

For the last couple of hours, the Elf and Ranger had walked in the natural quietude of nighttime in the forest. They had not crossed the path of any wildlife nor had they seen any other sentient beings – unless one counted the opossum they had spied scurrying in the shadowy underbrush as it foraged for food. Moreover, they had not encountered the haunt, nor had Legolas felt her manifestation. For weeks now, even when unaware of exactly what it was he perceived, the Elf had felt the child’s existence to some degree; so, although he still feared she might appear without his knowing, he had assured himself constantly over the last hours that even if she did not appear before him again, he would know by the return of his paranoia if she resumed her stalking.

Less than half an hour after the resumption of their journey to the village, the two had found the most tangible sign of civilization they had seen in months – that is, they had come across ruts in the overgrown, dirt lane they now followed through the sparse vegetation between the dilapidated limestone wall and the meandering creek’s edge. Made by years of wagon travel, the ruts themselves were visible because they were free of grass and stones, and were relatively deep and wide, which to Legolas evinced that they were still in use and the path used frequently enough to be kept clear of debris. After they had followed those runnels for another half hour or so, the shabby road ended at a sharp bend in the increasingly deeper creek and did not pick up on the other side, though a better-maintained, partially flagstoned road ran perpendicular to this dead-end, with the limestone slabs lying in two wide, parallel strips for the wheels of a wagon to trod upon. From what the Adan told the Prince, because the hard and rocky ground underneath the thin layer of topsoil in this area made excavating wells a hard task, the Edain who lived on the farms farther out from the village brought barrels in wagons to gather and store water as supplement to their rainwater barrels and the few wells they had managed to dig. Aragorn supposed that this new road led into the village proper if followed, and since Legolas believed his lover knew the area better than did he, the Silvan had no reason to doubt this assumption.

The two had stopped at where the wagon path ended upon the creek and joined the stoned road, which was also close to where the creek separated into two divergent waterways around a huge outcropping that rose in the middle of its course. The northern section went a ways onward ere it fell into a short and plashing waterfall, while the southern section bustled around the sharp bend and presumably ran towards the main part of the village – cleaving it in two, according to Aragorn, except for the wooden bridge the villagers had made to cross it.

And so, now they rested by the creek’s side with Anor soon to rise behind them. They had both agreed that waiting until sunrise was better than potentially rousing the whole village in the dead of night with news of the death of one of their own. Just entering the village or knocking upon a farmhouse’s door before Anor rose might get one of them hurt by a villager who thought them to be raiders or Orcs. Besides, after a day and most of a night of trampling wildly through the woods, the two were keen to stop for a while, to rest, to eat, and to gather their thoughts.

Legolas looked over to where Estel sat against the trunk of a young birch tree, his head laid back against the peeling bark, and his eyes closed and breathing low, although the Ranger did not sleep. Cool and refreshing water eased over the Prince’s hands – he was refilling all of their waterskins in the creek, being that they were running low and might not have the chance to do so again for a while, depending on which direction their search for the nearest farm took them. Across the way, close enough that Legolas could still see it but far enough that its smell wasn’t overwhelming, the girl-child’s corpse laid. Light and small, the child’s body had been no burden at all to carry along their trek here. In fact, Legolas had borne her slight weight gladly, and when they had decided to stop, the Prince had gently laid her down – not upon the dirt and rock road, but upon the soft, whispering grasses to its side.

Amongst his second family in Rivendell and his kith and kin in Mirkwood, the Prince had a reputation for being a consummate warrior, a merry and convivial friend, and someone eager to be of help, with a sympathetic ear and counsel for any who asked it of him. Legolas also had a reputation for being a bit too tenderhearted, he knew. The reputation was well earned, since although he could kill a dozen Orcs and think nothing of it, the next moment, the Prince might become upset by one of his father’s tirades. Kalin and Elrond had both told the Silvan Prince that he had been bequeathed this trait of tenderheartedness by his Naneth. Although Legolas loved all the creatures of Ilúvatar’s making and believed that all had a part to play in Ilúvatar’s song, the Elf held an overwhelming fondness for animals, for the very young, and for the very old – including those of other races, such as the Edain, although he had learnt from his father to have little sympathy for the Dwarven race. In fact, Thranduil had often reminded his son when Legolas was young that the Naugrim were not children of Ilúvatar and thus were not worthy of his care or attention. Still, had they found the corpse of a Dwarf rather than a human, the Prince would also have treated it with respect by burying it or burning it, though he would not have gone searching for the Dwarf’s people, more than likely.

The Elf’s deep sympathies were mostly roused by the girl’s death because she was so young. Had they found a corpse of a middle-aged Adan instead of this child, Legolas might have left the body there rather than take it with them, though he would still have wanted to take word to the poor soul’s people. This innocent girl child, however, he could not have left behind for the carrion birds. Although the pale young girl and the gangly, dark haired youth Estel had once been looked nothing alike, she faintly reminded Legolas of Estel, nonetheless. Although he had not met Aragorn until the Adan was ten, he knew well the story of how the heir to the throne of Gondor had come to live with Elrond and his family, who had happily taken in the Adan toddler. Because of his lineage, Estel had always been in danger from the forces of the Dark One and even from his own kind who would see an end to the line of Isildur. The girl had been an innocent child with little to no knowledge of the evils of the world, the Prince was willing to bet, just as had Estel been innocent of his own heritage and the vile happenings in the world when her age. Her haunt now knew of evil and heartache the likes of which Estel had held no knowledge at her age, though with which the Prince had been familiar when of similar maturity. Thus, it was not only her death that caused him to feel sorrow for the girl, but that she was not at peace even now, and apparently needed their help to find it.

The waterskin he held now rinsed out and refilled, the Elf capped it and grabbed another to repeat the task, though he first scanned the woods around them, as he did every few minutes, at the least. As his gaze lit upon the Ranger, the laegel worried at how weary the Adan seemed to be. _It is unlike Estel to be so tired so quickly,_ he thought but then reasoned, _although, I suppose he had little sleep our last night at the lake and no rest yesterday while fleeing through the woods._ The niggling thought occurred to him, however, _But usually, Estel can go for days without sleep or rest and not look so exhausted. I hope he is not getting sick._ A heavy sense of déjà vu struck the Elf; he remembered thinking much the same on their way to Mirkwood months ago when Estel had become so ill that they had ridden nonstop to get the human to the Elvenking’s halls. Unlike that time, Legolas did not have the twins or his sentries for aid. It was a frightening worry that it might happen again.

Remembering this caused the Prince to recall something else. While trying to get the human home to the valley after their deadly encounter with Mithfindl, the Elf had promised himself that he would learn all he could about herbs and healing relevant to the Edain to be of assistance to the Ranger should Aragorn take ill again, as he had during their return to the vale from feverish infection because of the stab wound the Prince had given him. Now, as he cast another glance at the exhausted Adan, the Elf wished he had not forsaken that promise to himself. He had, in fact, not thought of it once upon their arrival in Imladris and had only remembered it now. Should Estel become sick from one of the many illnesses to which mortals were susceptible, Legolas would have little knowledge of how to help him.

Since the day prior to the one when his father left the valley, the day when for the first time the Woodland Prince had experienced an attack of panic the likes of which he had never experienced before, Legolas often found himself battling anxiety. In his dreams of the human’s death, when unwillingly recalling memories of his abuse and torment, and in random moments when he truly had nothing over which to fret, the Silvan’s inexplicable, overwhelming dread would begin to mount. Usually, Estel’s mere presence kept the Wood-Elf calm, but with the human’s very presence threatened by the Elf’s own dread that Aragorn might be ill, Legolas found himself on the verge of terror.

 _You are only making yourself evermore anxious,_ the Wood-Elf tried to reason and took a deep breath. _We have enough worries without you fabricating more. Calm down._ He washed out and off the waterskin thoroughly ere he perused the forest around them yet again, looked back to Estel, and then promptly forgot the advice he had just given himself when he wondered, _Is Estel shivering?_

Forgetting the waterskin he held in hand, the laegel let it drop to the creek’s bank, stood, and in a few quick strides, crossed to where Aragorn sat. He expected that Estel would open his eyes the moment he drew near, for the Ranger had spent enough time in the wilds to have a preternatural ability to detect the slightest changes in his environment to notice danger. And yet, Aragorn did not so much as crack open an eyelid. However, he was shivering, just as the Elf had thought.

“Estel?” he prompted the human softly.

At once, and to Legolas’ relief, the Ranger opened his eyes and sat up straight, the weariness upon his angular face becoming wariness, instead. “Greenleaf? Is all well?”

“To my knowledge, yes.” Lowering himself onto the ground beside the Ranger and desiring to touch the Adan to comfort himself with the feel of Aragorn’s warm flesh, he pulled the willing man’s legs such that they lay over the Elf’s lap. He then began massaging the Adan’s calves and thighs in absentminded affection. “Do you feel well, meleth nin?”

“I’m fine,” the human assured the Elf, but admitted, “but tired. And cold. I’m freezing.”

By its strap, the Prince dragged the Ranger’s bag closer and began fretting loose the ties holding the rolled blankets. “Dawn is still a while away. Why do you not sleep for a while? I will stay awake to keep watch.”

Shaking his head, Aragorn countered with a grin, “I don’t know that I can sleep. I might miss out on all the fun.”

He returned the human’s smile instinctually, though the embittered Wood-Elf felt it very likely that the Ranger did not wish to sleep because he would rather be keeping watch over Legolas to ascertain that the Prince did not do something foolish again; it was not a pleasant thought to know his human lover did not trust him to act reasonably. While thinking of how to convince the Ranger to rest, Legolas watched as Estel did now what he had done often over the last few hours – Aragorn reached behind him to rub at his lower back. His unease growing though he did not yet have reason to doubt the Adan’s promise of being well, Legolas began to ask to see Estel’s back, to check for injury, but was drawn from his morbid musings by his lover’s softly spoken instructions.

“Greenleaf. Look in the distance,” the Adan told the Prince, bending to peer intently towards the south. “Between those two trees.”

He looked to where the man pointed. Between a gap in the trees around them, the Elf could make out the telltale sweep of sails going round and round in the slight breeze, the cloth upon the vanes a dilapidated, sun faded yellow that seemed out of place in the dark sky of the night. Upon a slight hill, the windmill was surrounded by tilled land; too far away for Estel to see clearly, the laegel could only just tell that the field around the distant mill was planted with winter wheat.

“We must be close to a farmhouse,” the Ranger assured the Elf, although the human was the one who appeared fatigued, drawn, and drained. “We can leave her body with them and let them find her people. And then we can head north for the Downs, as planned.”

“And in a few hours, I will wake you for us to go there,” he argued lightly with his human lover, sitting back up straight and resuming his task of pulling free one of the blankets tied to the Ranger’s pack. “Please, Estel. Sleep for a while.”

When it seemed that the Ranger would not give in, with the blanket in hand, Legolas pushed the human’s legs from off his own, crawled closer to the human, impelled him away from the tree’s trunk, and slid in behind Aragorn. He forced the pliable but grumbling man into moving away while guiding Estel into lying down on his side. Immediately, the Ranger rested his head upon the Prince’s lap, which is what the Elf had intended, and then the tired human finally sighed and agreed, “Fine, Greenleaf. Wake me at dawn, or if she returns or someone approaches. Promise me.”

He unfurled the blanket and spread it out over the man, who shifted where he lay so that he could slip one arm under and between the Silvan’s thighs, and thus had a tight hold of Legolas’ upper leg, which he then replaced his head upon, nestling and nuzzling the Elf’s thigh until he was comfortably situated. “I promise, Estel. Be quiet and rest.”

Legolas smirked to himself, knowing that it was only because the Ranger would wake should the Elf try to move that Aragorn was willing to lose this argument. Otherwise, the Ranger would insist upon staying awake to keep track of the Wood-Elf. It didn’t take long before the human’s shivering subsided and his breathing evened out into the familiar, low, and comforting rhythm that the Silvan had listened to for years of being beside the human in the wilds and more recently in their shared bed. Looking around him as he had so many times in the past day, Legolas regretted that he was unable to see behind them, but the laegel hoped he proved a better or more desirable target for the haunt should she return.

 _I should not have told him what she showed me. I should not have told him that I saw anything other than her._ He would wish that he could have hidden the existence of the haunt herself from the Ranger, but that would only have placed Aragorn in danger, so Legolas could only wish that he had kept secret the spirit’s vision and his reasoning for reaching out to her. Often over the last few months, Legolas had been dismissed by his friends, father, fellow Silvan, and lover, treated as a silly child, or disbelieved and patronized. They had all thought to have his best interests at the forefront of their actions, though they had only proven to Legolas that they believed him mad or foolish. He did not want to give the man any further reason to doubt what Legolas said. Already, Estel did not trust him to be left to his own devices, as if the Elf were a child who needed minding.

He did not doubt himself, however, as he had many times over the last few months – at least, not in regards to the specter. Legolas knew what he had seen. He knew that the haunt existed, the danger she might pose was genuine, and the memory or daydream she had shown Legolas was just as real, as well. Perhaps he ought to be grateful that the haunt was gone. Perhaps he ought to pray that she would remain absent. However, Legolas inexplicably felt as if he had failed the specter in some way.

_Perhaps, if we take her body home to her people, to the merry Adan man whom she showed me, her spirit will be at rest._

As much as the thought comforted him, Legolas was quite certain that it was merely wishful thinking on his part, and he was just as certain that they would see the haunt again soon.

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His awareness hovered somewhere between wake and sleep, occasionally dipping further into slumber before he floated back up to a vague sentience. Because of the creek’s small waterfall, the Adan thought himself to be in his bed at home – or rather, in the Elf’s bed, which was the Ranger’s bed now – and because he could sense and feel Legolas near to him, Aragorn let himself doze.

If the Elf was beside him, then all was well. It was as simple as that for the Adan.

“Estel?”

But with this single spoken word, the human was awake. Legolas began to run his fingers through the man’s wavy hair, and scratched Estel’s scalp with his fingernails in a most pleasant fashion. Aragorn pressed his face hard into the Elf’s thigh. The intoxicatingly conversant smell of his lover made him want nothing more than to pretend he hadn’t heard Legolas so he could go back to dozing. The hard ground under him caused him a moment of confusion until his tired mind supplied him with the account of the last few days’ events. _I thought I would wake to find us in the valley,_ the Ranger mused, truly wishing he could wake to find them both in Imladris, where the Prince would be safe from whatever haunted him.

“Estel?”

Aragorn tried to reply but succeeded only in mumbling grumpily and unintelligibly.

With a laugh in his mild voice, Legolas told the Ranger, “I know you’re awake, meleth nin. It is past dawn.”

Lying with his head upon the Silvan while wrapped tightly in the wool blanket placed over him had created for the Adan a wondrous warmth. In fact, it was the first time that the Ranger hadn’t felt chilled in the hours since last the girl-child’s haunt had come to them. Although apparently he had slept for longer than he had intended and while he ought to have felt refreshed, Aragorn realized that he felt more tired than before. Despite their currently dire circumstances, the Ranger’s love for the Silvan Elf under his cheek caused his impish side to arouse right along with his sluggishly wakening mind, and he turned over so that his head still laid upon the Elf’s thigh but he moved his face closer to the Prince’s torso, his nose now turned into the cloth over Legolas’ taut belly. With a deep and gratifying inhale, the Adan took in the pleasing scent of his lover’s body. No matter what they did, no matter how many Orcs or other vile things they killed, no matter where they had been or through what mire they might have trudged, and no matter that the Elf had been carrying around a corpse for hours, Legolas smelled of the delectably simple smell of summery citrus fruit and the vigorous scent of the woods.

This time, the Wood-Elf laughed outright at Aragorn’s antics, teasing the human, “You drooled on my thigh in your sleep, Estel. Do you intend now to drool on my stomach?”

He wound his arms around the Silvan’s waist and adoringly forced his face flush to the Prince’s navel. “If I salivated in my sleep,” he replied, his voice somewhat muffled by the cloth of the Elf’s tunic, “it is because being so near to you without being able to taste you is like placing a starving man before bread and telling him that he cannot eat. His mouth will water just as mine has.”

Lighthearted and endearing, the Wood-Elf’s jocular laughter rang happily through the scrubby, boisterous morning forest around them. He knew he sounded foolishly sentimental and silly when he paid the Elf these kinds of strange compliments, but since they never failed to make Legolas laugh, the Ranger would never cease. “If you hunger, meleth nin, then I fear you will have to make do with jerky this morning.”

The human finally let go of the Elf and rose into sitting, and then successfully hid his dizziness upon doing so. He groaned petulantly and told his lover, “You are a cruel Elf, Greenleaf, to tempt me with a feast but give me only a glance at the bounty you offer. But I suppose now is not the time or the place for it. The people in the nearby farmhouse ought to be awake by now, I should think, and the sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can eat.”

Legolas laughed again, his merriment at the Adan’s playfulness not waning even with the reminder of their intended task for the day. Scooting away from the human to stand, the Elf held his hand out to keep the Ranger from rising when he saw Aragorn about do the same, and told him, “You need to eat something. Actual food, Estel. Then we will go.”

The Prince walked to where he had left his belongings and the waterskins, took up his satchel, and dug through it to find two small, late autumn apples and the pouch of jerky. The former he kept for himself while the latter he passed to Estel, who would always choose meat over fruit if given the option. Obediently, the man opened the pouch and ate.

The Ranger felt strange. The small, interspersed cold spots upon his back had apparently grown larger in circumference until they had eventually joined together, leaving the whole of his lower back in a numbed state. Valiantly, the human tried to hide his shivering, but without the steady warmth of the Silvan beside him, the cold was already leeching back into his flesh, despite the early day being warmer than usual for this time of year. As had Legolas thought earlier, Estel considered now, _I may be getting sick. Wonderful,_ he complained to himself. But his own explanation for his frigid and shivering state did not sit well with him. _I think I have lied to Greenleaf and myself. I think the haunt managed to touch me before Greenleaf pulled me away._

The Wood-Elf ate his apples quickly and thoroughly, pulling with his straight and bright teeth every bit of flesh from the core that he could, ere he chucked them into the woods, across the creek, where they smacked with a loud thump against the trunk of a tree, and then landed with a rustle of the leaves underneath. Legolas seemed to be in a good mood, though why this was so, Estel did not understand. And yet, why he felt that the Prince should be in a foul mood, the Ranger was not certain, either. Legolas began to hum to himself as he took up the forgotten waterskin he had been filling hours earlier to finish his work with it, then went about seeing to the last one that needed filling. Although he did not truly hunger, the Adan ate several small pieces of the cured meat until he felt it sufficient enough; he closed the pouch and placed it back inside the Elf’s knapsack.

When he saw that the Prince was strapping his quiver upon his torso, Aragorn finally stood and began doing similar in belting his broadsword around his waist. _Later. I will tell him later. If we return the girl to her people, maybe her spirit will be appeased and leave Greenleaf be,_ he hoped as the Elf had hoped earlier, for the Elf and Ranger’s thoughts often followed similar lines of logic – much like the twins, though for Aragorn and Legolas, it was the compatibility of close friends and lovers rather than brothers. _Perhaps then, this silly chill will have gone, or it will disappear right along with her._

Carefully, the Elf picked up the child’s body once more. Although the smell of death was as strong as without the blanket, having been so close to the odor for a long while now, the Ranger had grown somewhat accustomed to its pungency, at least. _If he has to carry her for many more hours to find a place to leave her, Legolas will have to soak his clothes in soap for days if not burn them, just to get rid of this smell,_ he absently considered while pushing his askew hair into some semblance of order. _And likely scrub in a tub of hot water for hours to be free of it from his skin and hair._

He couldn’t imagine Legolas smelling of anything but the lovely cleanliness of which he usually smelled. But the thought of soaking in a tub with the Elf was a welcome imagining. He and the Prince had enjoyed each other’s’ bodies multiple times every day for the past weeks and it had only been about a day since last they had done so, but the Ranger was eager to leave off this sidetracking task associated with this girl’s haunt, and not just to be rid of the smell or to get back to the simplicity of having the Elf all to himself, but more importantly, to be free of the worry for his Silvan lover – worry that even now began to creep down his spine like a spider lowering itself by a thread of webbing.

“Do you feel her presence?” he asked the Elf.

Legolas shook and then motioned with his fair head for the human to move in front of him. They would do now as they had the night before with Estel walking slightly ahead of and to the side of Legolas, such that the Prince could keep watch for the specter. “No, I do not feel her and have not felt her since we found her body.”

The sun shone brilliantly and warmly, while the human felt dull and cold. As they walked, Aragorn often looked back to Legolas to make certain that he did not walk too far ahead of the Elda, and in doing so, noted that the Elf was looking about them with the simple enjoyment of being in nature, which was where the Wood-Elf most wanted to be at all times. After feeling almost all the day that they were being watched, the perception of their being pursued was now absent, by the laegel’s admission, so the human should have been appeased by this. And yet, his dread was growing in tandem with the algid numbness upon his back, such that although Legolas seemed to be enjoying this morning walk, Aragorn felt as if they ought to be sprinting, which was contrary to how they had spent the day yesterday, what with the Elf desiring to flee while Estel wanted to linger.

He fought the urge to rub at his lower back. When the scar had still been written upon the Elf’s thigh and had held sway over Legolas, the Silvan had once told Aragorn that the flesh had felt foreign to him. Legolas had said he could sometimes feel the scar with his fingers but not feel his fingers with the scar. The Ranger wondered about this now, since he was quite certain that should he reach behind him, he would be able to feel the muscled flesh of his lower back but not be able to feel his fingers upon it.

 _A little while longer,_ he placated himself. _Let us see what happens with taking her body to her people before I frighten Greenleaf._

The road they followed cut through two fallow fields as they started, but as they continued to followed the weedy, flagstoned path, the western one held winter wheat, just as Legolas had seen, with the windmill built tall and high upon a mound on the otherwise flat land so that it would catch the breeze with its sails. Beyond that windmill and within their sight sat the farmhouse for which they had hoped. He slowed to a halt and looked behind him. Legolas was smiling at him, his good cheer rising further at their discovery. He returned the Elf’s smile but neither spoke; they both walked a little more quickly, though, and they were past the windmill and the winter wheat field, off the road and onto a dirt path, and soon approaching the farm’s barnyard before Aragorn realized why his unease was becoming panic.

An outlying farm such as this one could be expected to be relatively quieter than the village proper would be, unquestionably, but most farmers were up and about with the rise of the sun to get as much done as possible in the daylight. Estel couldn’t help but wonder at how hushed this particular farm was. _No dogs barking upon hearing our approach, no horses whinnying to each other in the barn, and no cows or pigs lowing, snorting, or munching on grass or feed._ Without conscious thought, the Ranger placed a hand upon the haft of his broadsword and began assessing their surroundings for both danger and places that they could take cover should they be attacked.

From the outside, the house wasn’t much; it was likely only a couple of rooms and only one floor. It was well built, however, with slabs of limestone much like that of the fence they had earlier followed, mortared with clay, mud, and rocks, and had a recently refurbished thatch roof. The barn was constructed with planks of seasoned wood, as was the fence making an irregular square on the side opposite from the one by which they approached, where animals would likely have been kept, though Estel could not see any now. On the other side of the barn, where they walked past currently, sat a vegetable garden. While not the season for growing most vegetables, from where he stood, Estel could discern the telltale vines of various types of winter squash, and he could also see that while the earth had been tilled and kept free of weeds, the plants growing there were untended themselves, for the squash were already rotting upon their vines.

He turned to ask Legolas what he thought of all this, only to find the Wood-Elf had stopped long before Estel had, and the Elf’s shocked gaze was solely for the barn. At once, the Ranger trotted back to where the laegel stood and took the Elf’s elbow in hand, though he was careful not to yank him and cause Legolas to drop the girl’s corpse. “Greenleaf? What is it?”

Vacant and bewildered, the Elf turned his attention to Aragorn and told him in incomprehension, “This is it. The place she showed me. The field and the barn. This is her home. But something is wrong here, Estel.”

Legolas shuddered, and as if in sympathy, though it was his own nervousness and his frigid skin to cause it, Aragorn shivered, as well. Indeed, his own uneasiness was surpassed only by the Silvan’s disquiet. Again, the Ranger’s hand crept to the hilt of his sword, which he then pulled free of its sheath to be at ready; in tandem, the Wood-Elf sought to arm himself, as well. Being that Legolas still carried the girl’s body, he first carefully laid her down beside the fence around the wasting garden, ere he took his bow in hand, pulled an arrow free from his quiver, and settled it upon the bowstring. The familiarity of this, of how easily it came to them to act as one in protecting themselves and each other, calmed the Adan’s nerves, at least. For years, the Elf and Ranger had traveled together and faced various dangers. Warcraft was their profession – or since they were not exactly paid for it, their pastime, if nothing else. 

The quivering, discomforting cold upon his skin made the Ranger’s walk feel stilted and uneven. Without conferring between them, the two walked nearly back to back so that they could keep watch over the entirety of their surroundings, with the human facing the house and the Elf facing the main road, which meant that Legolas was mostly walking backwards. Onwards they went, with their footsteps nearly inaudible. Whoever was inside might not know they had company just yet.

“Estel,” the laegel whispered, though his next words were spoken in a normal tone, “Can you smell it? I would wager no living thing is inside that house.”

Breathing in deeply, the Ranger could only smell the by now familiar odor of the girl’s rotting corpse, but suddenly realized that the scent was growing stronger the closer they got to the house, though they were walking away from where they had left the body by the fence. _That explains the eerie silence. Nothing lives to make a noise._ Having decided separately but concomitantly that there was no danger any longer and that the creepiness of the farm was due to its deceased inhabitants, Legolas replaced his arrow and bow, and Estel lowered his broadsword.

His relief was short-lived, of course, for though they felt to be out of peril now, they were also faced with a new dilemma. They had brought the girl’s body here to bring word of her death, to seek aid in the search for her people; Legolas claimed to have seen this place from the child’s own mind and thus concluded that this was her home. But now, from the pervasive smell of decay around them, it seemed that they had no one to whom to offer the girl’s body. _Now what do we do? I thought this might be the end of it but it is only the beginning, if Greenleaf is right of there being only more corpses here._

Legolas was thinking much the same though he had already moved on to what they ought to do now. The Elf shifted so that he stood between Estel and the house, then told the Ranger, “We must be certain no one is injured inside, that they are all dead, and to see how they have died. Stay out here for a moment, while I check.”

Already, Aragorn was shaking his head to disagree. Even if all the inhabitants of the house were dead, the Ranger was not standing in the barnyard while Legolas risked his life to investigate.

“We do not know for certain what has caused their deaths, meleth nin,” the Silvan explained patiently, hoping to reason with the obstinate Ranger. “What if it is some human illness? Or some poison with which you might come into contact?”

Legolas’ arguments were sound, truly, for the Elf would be invulnerable to such causes of death, whereas Estel might not. Aragorn paced closer to the Elf, reached out, and took hold of Legolas’ waist with both hands. “And what if the haunt waits inside for you? What if it isn’t some intangible force that has killed the people inside that house, but _something_ inside, lying in wait for you to enter? I should come with you.”

In the aureate sunshine and the light breeze, the laegel’s hair wisped around his alabaster face and fair head in spun threads of gold. His cerulean eyes were steadfast upon the Ranger’s silver orbs – Legolas did not offer further quarrel. Estel knew he would not win this argument, and in the end, it was the laegel’s simple plea that caused his obeisance to the Prince’s wishes, for Aragorn could not say no to his lover when the Elf only pled softly, “Please, Estel.”

With an unwilling nod, Aragorn agreed, and then watched as the Wood-Elf prepared to enter the house alone.


	7. Chapter 7

Although the day was unseasonably warm, Legolas noted as he approached the house that all the shutters were closed, allowing in none of the light or fresh air from the bright, beautiful autumn morning. No smoke came from the chimney – while the fire would not be needed for warmth today, Legolas might have expected a family within to be cooking their meals or heating water for baths or cleaning. But no, the house was shut up tight as if its owners were not home. Sitting on a rock base, which to the Prince showed that the house might be built on a root cellar of some sort, the building had a small stoop made of layers of limestone slab and three graduated slabs for steps. He climbed these quickly, all the while feeling Aragorn’s eyes upon him. He could sense his lover’s fear as clearly as he could feel his own trepidation. Despite his firm belief that the beings inside this house were dead, the Elf did not relish finding the evidence to prove himself right. He only wished that the corpses were all he found and not more haunts or some fell beast.

With the simple latch to the door in hand, the Elf first looked back to Estel. The Ranger had moved closer to the front of the small house, but stayed beside the mostly decorative, plank gate of the leaning, weathered fence that separated the houseyard from the barnyard. Estel could hide behind it for scant but hopefully sufficient cover if need be. The Elf pushed against the door. It was unbolted from the inside, as the Prince thought it might be. Dead people had no use for locks. The smell of rotting flesh overwhelmed the Wood-Elf for a moment. He paused only a second longer to look back to the Ranger, giving Aragorn and the area around him a thorough but rapid survey for the girl’s specter or any other danger, ere he walked inside.

As one of the Firstborn, his eyes were swift to adjust to the difference between the bright light outside and the near absolute darkness within the house. There were no candles lit, no fire in the hearth – as he had predicted from seeing the smokeless chimney – and no lamps burning. However, the Elf needed no illumination to know that there was no living being inside the dwelling, lest there was a mouse or other critter hiding. Even this seemed unlikely, for no light seeped in between any crack in the mortar or through the thatch overhead, meaning that its owners had done a fine job of sealing their home against the winter winds. Not wanting to be a target by standing in the doorway, the Silvan stepped farther inside and respectfully if uselessly rubbed the soles of his boots against a mat by the door that had been placed there for that very purpose, one that held several other pairs of boots in various sizes. It seemed inhospitable to track dirt and leaves across the clean floor, regardless of whether its occupants were alive to care. He left the door open in case he needed to get out or the Ranger needed to get inside in a hurry.

 _Even though I knew they would be dead, I suppose I was hoping to be wrong,_ the Elf thought with a tired and sad sigh.

Near to where he stood laid a man younger in years than was Estel. His boots were upon the mat, it seemed, for his stocking feet were visible beneath the pile of wood lengths and kindling he had apparently been carrying inside, ere he had crumpled lifelessly to the smoothly sanded wood floor of his home. In lightweight cotton trousers and a humble, thin linen shirt, the human was dressed for summer weather, rather than late autumn. Facedown upon the floor, the dead Adan wasn’t surrounded by blood and showed no sign of injury from what the Elf could tell. Carefully, the Prince stepped around the man to investigate the rest of the home. The open doorway cast a wide swath of idyllic luminosity upon a young woman who sat at the unadorned but well-crafted table near the hearth. Her upper body was toppled over what appeared to be a small crib placed on the floor, the kind that would rock if given a push.

 _Sweet Eru, please don’t let it be,_ the laegel prayed absently as he reluctantly ambled closer.

To his dismay, inside the crib he found exactly what he feared. Waxy white with its dark brown eyes gazing lifelessly up at the rafters, the boy child had been dead for weeks, as had the man and woman in the room with the babe – or so he decided by his own estimation. Strangely, the babe almost appeared to be smiling, as though he had died in the midst of the innocent joy of which only the very young or feeble of mind are capable. The Elf swallowed hard, bile rising in his throat at the sight. As accustomed to death and decay as he was, this was the first time the Prince had ever seen an infant in such a state. In fact, although he had seen his share of dead children – a few Elflings but mostly Adan children who had died from disease, starvation, and trauma – he had never seen one so young. He forced himself to look away.

Without thinking, the Prince murmured aloud, “Goheno nin. Berio ven Eru, tithen pen.”

The walls of the house were undecorated except for a few painstakingly embroidered tapestries of the sort that the laegel knew the humans to call quilts, though these were merely decorative and too small to be used as blankets. In cut and sewn pieces of various scraps of fabric, the one closest to Legolas depicted the sun rising over the Misty Mountains. The windows, their shutters pulled and latched, were covered in tattered, faded, but clean curtains. The main room where he now stood held two lofts in the tapered eaves of the roof; each was accessible by a roughhewn ladder bisecting the small sleeping areas. Climbing the first few rungs, the Elf scanned the lofts and found nothing but two straw stuffed mats and several heavy woolen blankets. Forgoing investigating the upper area any further, the Wood-Elf hopped off the ladder and then sidestepped the crib to reach the only other door in the room other than the entrance, where behind the curtain serving as its door he found a smaller room, wherein sat a made bed suitable for two and a trunk at its end. The family who had lived here had obviously been poor, but they had been proud of what they owned and had taken good care of their meager belongings. They were gentlefolk – the kind of people whom his father and many Elves and noble of the Edain overlooked, for they were not wealthy or powerful, but the kind of people whom Legolas knew to be the true foundation upon which was built and sustained the oft-crumbling and ever-changing firmament of aristocrats in Elven and Edain societies.

 _They did not deserve this. Whatever has happened to them, they did not deserve it,_ he decided, though he was only half-aware of what he was thinking. _They were only farmers, only simple folk. Their lives were hard enough as it was without being cut short by this unknown evil._

Along one wall near to the hearth and table were rough cabinets upon which bowls and other cooking utensils were sorted and stored. He did not think it appropriate to go digging through the family’s belongings, but he did look into the fireplace at a pot hanging low over the pile of ash on the hearthstones, only to find that the pot held the scorched and moldering remains of what might have once been stew or soup. Being that there were bowls and spoons – all of which were carved from wood – upon the table, Legolas thought the family might have died right before eating their dinner. At the far end of the house, two rocking chairs sat before the second stone fireplace, and a well-worn but clean bear pelt lay in front of the hearth. Upon it sat several cornhusk dolls and a gangly, tattered, and stuffed toy that was made to look like a bear.

_Is this her home? Did she play with those dolls, hug that stuffed bear, and lay upon that rug while her parents sat before the fire?_

Unlike the girl’s body, these three corpses were untouched by predators, though they were all in a similar state of decay. It would be hard to gauge with the state of the family’s remains, but Legolas would try to discern whether it was so. He turned back to the woman and the infant. The little boy had only the barest wisps of blond hair upon his small head and being that he had been so young and had been dead for so long, his features were indistinct. Morbidly curious to see the woman’s face, he tried to push her upper body back, but when she began to slide from her precarious position on the chair to the floor, the Prince forsook this task for now.

 _Is this her mother? An aunt? If this was her home, is this her brother in the crib? Her father upon the floor? The woman’s hair is the same color as the girl child’s hair,_ the Elf thought of the deceased woman, whose silvery blond tresses matched those of the corpse of the Adan girl he and Estel had found hours ago – the very one whose haunt had been stalking him and Estel, the one whose body was outside by the road, wrapped in a blanket in hopes of returning her to these very people – or so he had yearned.

 _I see no injuries. What would cause three Edain to die so suddenly?_ he asked himself but then amended, _No, four Edain, including the girl. They must have all died at once, rather than one by one, else they would not be where they were._

It stood to reason that if the man had collapsed to the floor, the woman would have risen to see what had befallen him; likewise, had the woman died where she sat, the man would have gone to her. There could not have been but a few moments time between their deaths, otherwise, one of them would have at least drawn near to their loved one upon his or her death. The human man had a short sword strapped to his waist, but it was sheathed, evincing that he had likely not encountered or expected any danger upon his entering with his arms full of firewood. He’d even taken off his boots before walking into the house.

 _What foe could have snuck in here without their knowledge? No Orc or bandit could kill these people without their having tried to save themselves or each other._ The idea of an invisible entity capable of killing without leaving a trace naturally led the Elf to think of the haunt and of how he had thought that she could draw the very life from everything around her. _Isn’t this her family, though? It is the place she showed me,_ he wondered in confusion and aggravation. _Why would she want to kill her own people?_

As he hurriedly examined the rest of the house for any clues he might have missed, the Prince wondered, _Is there some human sickness that can kill this quickly?_ This reminded Legolas that while he might be immune to such sickness, his beloved Ranger was not. _I cannot let Estel in here, just in case._ As he was no healer, and no human, Legolas knew little of Adan sickness, but he had heard stories and been informed of pandemic illnesses that would run rampant through the Edain of Lake-town and other settlements. Coughing sicknesses, fevers, and the like were sometimes vicious enough to decimate the Secondborn population. When he had asked his Minyatar once why such sickness spread like wildfire amongst humans, Elrond had told the Prince that it spread from human to human, making those who were closest to a sick person more likely to obtain the same illness. Legolas didn’t know if these three people had died of illness or if it could still be shared after death, but he was taking no chances.

The Wood-Elf suddenly realized, though, _But he has been near the girl’s body and touched her. If she died of whatever killed her people here, then it puts Estel at risk._

Thinking of this possibility and of how chilled the Ranger had been, how tired he looked, as if he were sick, but also thinking of how he had left the human outside where the haunt might approach and the Silvan would not be there to see her coming, Legolas inhaled sharply and cursed at himself under his breath. He had seen all he needed to see inside the house anyway, and so in a rush of trepidatious fear, moving so adroitly and deftly that had the humans within the room been alive they might have thought the Elf himself to be a haunt, Legolas sped across the house and out the open door to find his lover.

 _Where is he?_ He had left Aragorn for no more than a few minutes. Ere the Elf could work himself up into a frothing state of terror and irritation, he saw Aragorn standing near the fenced in pen beside the barn. He let loose the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding in, saying aloud quietly, “Thank you, Varda, for keeping him safe.”

He wanted to chastise the thoughtless human for worrying him but hardly had cause, since Estel was an adult not a child, and he hadn’t even wandered beyond the Prince’s sight – just away from where he had been. “Estel,” he began, intending to admonish the man a bit, anyway, when he saw at what the Ranger was looking with such strange intensity.

The small area around which the farmers had built the pen was not uninhabited, as first the Elf and Ranger had thought upon their approach. Having been curious and seeking to distract himself from his worry for Legolas, Aragorn had idled over to look inside what they had thought was an empty pen, only to find why they had seen no domesticated animals within – several goats and a cow were all lying dead near to the side of the barn, where the weeds were tallest, with their fly covered bodies haphazardly scattered around the water trough sitting under the shade of the barn’s eave. Unlike the people in the house, the animals’ cause of death was instantly familiar – desiccation and starvation. The water in the trough was long since dry, since no one had been alive to see it refilled, and the poor animals had picked clean every scrap of greenery from the ground within the pen and for as far as they could reach beyond the fence’s obstruction. The side of the barn adjoining the pen held the hayloft’s small door, from which the hay could just be tossed down into the pen, and though Legolas could see through the opening in the gable that there was hay stored in the loft, whatever had been in the pen had long since been consumed.

It upset the Prince only slightly less to find these animals having suffered to death through famishment and dehydration than it did to find the dead humans – at least the humans appeared to have died instantly and without pain, while these poor beasts had suffered for days or weeks.

Seeking to touch his lover, without looking at Legolas, Estel slipped his hand into the Elf’s hand and held it tight. Though he could well guess the Prince’s answer, the Ranger asked, “Was anyone or anything alive inside the house?”

Not able yet to make sense of what they were seeing to speak cogently of it, Legolas returned the tight hold of the Adan’s hand and offered the little information he had, “No. There are three within the house: a man, woman, and an infant less than a year old. They have all died, though from what, I cannot say, nor for how long exactly, though it is clear that it has been weeks since their passing. They had their table set for dinner,” he told Estel, shaking his head and looking back to the livestock. He brought the man’s hand to his belly and held it there, wrapping his free hand around it, as well.

A pained grimace crossed Aragorn’s face to hear that an infant had perished. Life was too short for mortals as it was, but to have a young Adan’s life ended before it had even begun seemed a terrible wrong.

As he had often since the first time they had seen the ghost, Aragorn asked now, “Can you feel her? Is she near?”

“No, I don’t believe so, Estel.” Within his hands, the Ranger’s hand felt cool to his touch; he uncurled the man’s fingers, lifted his tunic, and laid Estel’s hand flat against the Silvan’s warm belly, and then, he grabbed the other of the human’s hands to do the same to it, as well, which compelled the Adan to turn to face Legolas. When Estel looked at him wonderingly, the Elf explained, “Your hands are freezing cold, meleth nin. Are you sure you are well?”

A brief flash of remorse crossed the Ranger’s face before he schooled it into a soothing smile for Legolas. “I am fine. Or as fine as I can be given the circumstances.”

Still, Aragorn did not remove his hands from under the Elf’s tunic but swept them around the Elf’s body, over the nude and warm flesh of the Prince’s sides and to his back, where the man held firm while encasing Legolas in his embrace. At once, Legolas reciprocated by wrapping his arms around Aragorn’s neck. They stood like this for several minutes, the Ranger’s chin resting on the Prince’s shoulder, and the Prince’s face turned into the man’s whiskered throat. Unaware of how wild and fearful he had looked to Estel, Legolas thought he was giving Estel comfort by this affection, when in truth, the Ranger had wanted to ease his Elven lover’s anxiety, for he was well acquainted with the telltale signs of it upon Legolas’ features.

“I do not like this,” the Prince murmured into Aragorn’s neck. Remembering that he was supposed to be keeping watch for the haunt, Legolas pulled his head back but did not pull out of Aragorn’s hold. The man’s hands were finally no longer frigid against the Prince’s skin, for they had been warmed by Legolas’ body heat.

“Neither do I. But come, let us check the barn,” the Ranger suggested as he released the Elf and began walking towards the outbuilding’s closed doors. “I assume nothing lives inside there either, but let us be certain.”

For so long had the wide doors of the barn remained shut, leaves and other debris were piled up in the arced area where the barn’s door swung open, necessitating in their clearing a path first just to get inside. Legolas could not hear or perceive any living thing inside the barn, either, and so did not insist upon entering first. Instead, he turned a full circle to view their surroundings before they entered. As he had just told Estel, Legolas could not feel the Adan child’s spirit now as he had not felt it all morning, but she was not the only potential threat to their well-being. The winter wheat surrounding the house was not tall enough to hide anyone or thing that might be of menace to them, so the Elf decided that they were safe enough for the time being.

The stench of death hung vividly in the barn, as well. Along one wall of the small building were three stalls, two of which held the remains of dray horses, which from their looks had starved to death inside their stalls just as had the animals outside. One had a broken bone right above its fetlock, likely from having kicked at the sturdy gate of its stall in an attempt to be free to forage for food when its hunger overcame its domestication. The feather and bone remains of chickens littered the hay-scattered floor around them.

 _These poor horses,_ the Wood-Elf rued to himself, _locked in here where they had no chance to live beyond the deaths of their masters._

The Elf and Ranger walked to the end of the barn, where the body of yet another human lay. On his side, the elderly man had a bag that had once held grain for the chickens, but it was now emptied. More than likely, the Elf surmised from what they saw, the man had died while performing the task of feeding the chickens, and the animals had helped themselves to the feed spilled upon the ground and to what they could scavenge from the bag. Furthermore, since the barn door had been shut and there appeared to be no other way out of the building except the hayloft’s gable access, once they were out of grain to eat, the starving chickens had begun to eat the corpse. So disfigured was the man’s face from this that Legolas could not tell if he was in fact the same elderly, merry Adan the girl-haunt had shown him; at least, not until he spied the human’s open mouth.

_Although he isn’t smiling as he was in the memory or dream she showed me, he has the same teeth missing. It is surely the same man._

Estel was watching the Elf, waiting for his verdict, Legolas supposed. He supplied it, telling the Ranger, “I believe it is him. This corpse is missing the same teeth as the elder man she showed me, the one who picked her up and swung her around.”

Again, the Silvan’s mounting disquiet, the Adan came to the Elf and took his hand. By this hold, he pulled Legolas along with him until they were near the barn door, where the air was slightly fresher. “Tell me, Greenleaf. The people in the house – what did they look like? Were their faces contorted in pain? Were they lathering or bleeding from the mouth or nose? You said you could not tell how they died, so was there no blood upon them? No injury?”

Legolas shook his head as the man spoke, negating each possibility the Ranger’s questions offered. He removed his hand from Estel’s hand and walked to the open doorway, from where he looked outside towards the house. “None of those things. All three appeared as if death had come to them suddenly, without any warning whatsoever. The man seemed to have fallen while carrying firewood, the woman was slumped over at the table, and the infant had a smile upon his face, as though he had died mid-laugh. They had no weapons drawn; there was no blood, no visible injuries. They did not look to be in pain or fear.”

“Whatever has happened to these people, it is not from a predator or raid, not by Orc or man.” Unwilling to let the Elf long out of his reach, it seemed, Estel strode to be beside Legolas again, this time wrapping one arm around the Prince’s waist. Estel leant against the doorframe, drawing the laegel with him such that Legolas leant against the human; Aragorn wiped his hand over his brow, as if rubbing away an ache in his head. “Nor would it be sickness, if it is as you say and they all seemed to die at once. And had it been poison, there would be some indication of the suffering they would have endured during their end, or at least vomit or blood as their bodies tried to expel the poison. No, something far more sinister is happening here, Greenleaf. And I am not sure we are equipped to deal with it.”

Having the Ranger say he was certain that illness was not the cause of these strange deaths was of some comfort to the Elf. Aragorn had been trained by Middle Earth’s most adept healer, after all, and would know better than would the Prince know. And yet, Legolas didn’t like the Ranger’s appearance one bit. Having spent the last weeks in the sun, Aragorn was tanned a healthy shade of brown – like strongly brewed tea – so he was neither flushed nor pale. No dark circles lay under his eyes. He did not sweat as he would have had he a fever. The Elf could not pinpoint the latent disturbance in Aragorn’s otherwise healthy appearance, but it was there.

“Then what do you think we should do?” he asked his human lover. He had his own ideas about what course they might take, but wished to know what Estel thought.

The Ranger now rubbed at his bearded chin with his free hand, as he often did in unknowing imitation of Elrond, who also took to stroking his chin while thinking. Stepping away from the doorframe, the Adan entangled both arms around the Elf’s waist from behind, his hands clasped familiarly upon the Prince’s navel, and his front pressed as tightly to the Elf’s back as the Elf’s quiver would allow. Suddenly, the human buried his face in the back of the Wood-Elf’s head, his nose burrowing in the thick hair there, where he inhaled, as if seeking the scent of the Prince rather than of the decaying corpses littered upon the farm.

They stood like that for but a brief moment; Aragorn let go of Legolas, once again took his hand, and led the Prince out of the barn. Truth be told, Legolas no more wanted to remain in the dankly death-scented building than did Estel, and he eagerly followed the human. As they came to stand in the barnyard, just where they had stood and conferred upon their arrival, the Ranger finally answered, “Let us leave the girl’s body here and keep going. Let us continue on to the village.”

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He stood in the sunlight in the barnyard while Legolas carried the child’s body into the house, where it would be safe from further destruction by vultures or other carrion eaters. From the sun overhead, the Ranger estimated the time to be about midday. Their trek to the farmhouse and their time here had not been exhausting, but still, Estel was fatigued. No, not from physical exertion had he grown this tired, but from his constant battle not to shiver – or so he felt. Deny it though he tried, the Ranger knew that this was no mere illness. This was not human sickness.

 _I must tell Greenleaf,_ the Adan rued wearily. He did not cherish the idea of explaining to the already anxious Elf how he had misled Legolas into believing that the specter had not touched him, only to tell him now that the girl’s spirit may have done so. _His anger I can manage, but his fear for me I do not wish to see._

He had not wanted to say it aloud, since it was currently too near to his own precarious well-being for him to conjecture about comfortably, but he had to wonder, if only to himself, _They have all died from unknown causes. As if the life were drawn right out of their bodies. One of the details Greenleaf told me when first he explained seeing the haunt was that she appeared as if the light bent away so that she stood in dimness, as if she sucked the life out of the forest around her. What if it were true?_ he mused. _What if she – or something like her, whatever killed her, since she died from no visible injury so could be a victim, as well – has literally devoured the life from these poor people?_

Unable to stop himself, the Ranger’s whole body shook as a deleterious shudder ran from his calves, up the back of his thighs, and across his benumbed lower back, ere it stopped at his shoulders. He shot the Elf a glance to see if Legolas was looking his way, but fortuitously for the Adan, the Wood-Elf was securing the house’s door.

 _I will wait,_ he decided, the decision firm in his mind to protect Legolas at all costs to himself. _When we get to the village, perhaps we will find more information. Besides, this may only be my imagination. Perhaps I am only getting sick and my mind is playing tricks on me,_ he unpersuasively tried to convince himself.

Legolas approached him with his satchel in hand, through which he was digging to find food. “You need to eat,” the Elf was telling the Adan as he grew closer. “Sit and rest for a while, Estel, and eat, and sleep, if you need to. The village will still be there when you are ready.”

But the human did not hunger, nor did he feel as if he could possibly sleep with the myriad, muddling thoughts tumbling inside his aching head. “No, let us just go.”

The Elf eyed the man for a few moments, silently gauging whether Estel spoke truthfully, whether he truly needed to rest or eat. Being that the Ranger had eaten a little and slept a short while only hours earlier, Legolas didn’t press the issue; instead, he hefted his satchel over his shoulder, adjusted his weapons, and then nodded, telling the Adan, “I am eager to go, too. Do you recall how far from the creek the village lies?”

Without the burden of the girl’s body, Legolas and Aragorn could make better time than before, as the Ranger would no longer need to walk slowly and in front of the Elf to ensure that Legolas could keep watch for the haunt’s appearance. As they began back down the path towards the flagstoned road, Aragorn answered, “An hour, at most, I think. Do you feel her presence now?” he asked the Elf, knowing that he was likely soon to drive Legolas mad by repeating this question but unable to stop himself.

They had both held hope that returning the girl to her family might appease her somehow, but since her people were dead, who could say if her troubled soul would find any solace in her body’s homecoming?

Legolas shook his head and reached out to take the Ranger’s hand in his for a brief moment. Giving the Adan’s fingers a squeeze, he told the man, “No, Estel. Maybe she will not return,” the Elf offered, ostensibly not believing his own well-intentioned supposition. The day seemed too cheerful, too tranquil for the strange occurrences going on around them. Legolas realized how falsely his offering rung, so quickly changed the topic, saying, “Regardless, let us be away from here. We need only to tell the villagers, to warn them.”

The Ranger didn’t want to argue, nor yet admit that his own well-being might hinge upon getting to the bottom of these strange occurrences, so did not counter the Elf’s statement. Even had his own welfare not been tied to finding out the source of the villagers’ deaths, the Ranger would want to do more than merely warn the other villagers, since they might also fall victim to the same demise.  He would save this argument for later, though; perhaps then, they would have more information and a course of action, which would soften the blow of his admitting to the laegel of his own illness.

“The further away we are from this farm, the better for us, I think,” he told his Elven lover in vague agreement, though he added to himself, his focus upon moving each of his tired legs forward to match the Prince’s fast pace, _Unless we only walk into more of the same trouble._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note: my computer has died. This chapter was already uploaded but just awaiting publishing, which is why I have anything to post this week at all. I can still access the internet via my tablet and phone, but new chapters are on hold until I can get a new computer. Hopefully, this won't be more than a couple of weeks, assuming the crash of my pc didn't wreck my files, for if it did, then the whole story past my last backup is lost and I do not have the will to write it again. Fingers crossed!
> 
> Thanks for reading and enjoy!

The azure sky was vacant of any but the haziest clouds to hide Anor’s bright warmth; upon seeing the Elf and Ranger nearing, the occasional rabbit or squirrel ran from the openness of the empty road and into the safety of the overgrown weeds flanking it. On a different day, in different circumstances, but with the same company, Aragorn would have been overjoyed merely to be walking along this scenic road in the natural beauty of cultivated farmland – especially if Legolas were at his side. Even now, as if feeling hunger or thirst, Estel craved the Silvan’s comforting presence, his kind touch, the heat of the Prince’s body, the fragrant smell of his hair, and the melodious timbre of his voice. The Ranger lived each moment as if only in anticipation for the chance of seeing Legolas’ secretive smile – the one he shared only with Estel. Despite their potentially life-threatening situation, having the Wood-Elf with him was all that he required to feel a contentment that went beyond mere appeasement of his worried mind.

 _It isn’t a bad day to die,_ he joked to himself. _In fact, I cannot think of a better day for it._

Under his breath, seemingly without being aware of it, the Elf was humming. Having lived for years beyond Aragorn’s ability to imagine, Legolas had knowledge of a wide range of songs that the Ranger had never heard, but he knew this tune well. In Thranduil’s halls, the servants who cleaned the underground palace were a never-ending procession of Silvan who took great care with the Elvenking’s belongings as if they were their own. And perhaps, after spending centuries polishing the same ancient vases and tabletops, scrubbing the same floors and beating the dust out of the same rugs, the servants knew the furnishings of Thranduil’s palace better than did Thranduil know them. Over the years, Aragorn had always preferred not to remain in Mirkwood for long – being that the Elf-King had always abhorred him and did not hide this fact, and thus made every visit a torment for Aragorn through his alternating pointed silences and glib, guileful insults – but Estel had spent enough time there to recognize that Legolas hummed the peculiarly artless song the Silvan took to singing as one while they scrubbed and swept their way through the palace.

As he listened, half-wishing the Silvan would just outright sing so he could take diversion in the Prince’s pleasing voice, Aragorn recalled something that a couple of months ago the twins had told him of Legolas and Kalin, just days before the Elf and Ranger had left the valley for this journey. Elladan and Elrohir had been teasing Kalin, thus taking their new roles as brothers to the Silvan quite seriously, and had been informing the Ranger of times when Kalin had lost his temper in safeguard of his Prince or his Prince’s dignity. All in all, the effort had been wasted on Kalin, for the sentry would never be teased into being ashamed of his overprotection of Legolas; besides which, the twins truly respected Kalin immensely for his unflagging love and care of their Greenleaf, and spent most of their time ‘teasing’ in praise of the sentry, instead.

But now, thinking of their story caused the Adan to grin at the Silvan, who was too busy scanning the area around them to notice, and who also had not been around at the time the twins had revealed this story to Estel, so even had he noticed Aragorn’s grin would not know why his humming brought about the human’s cheer. According to the twins, at some point when the Prince was younger though after the time when the Queen had died, Legolas had tried to spend time with the servants of his father’s halls; being innocent and unpretentious and not allowed to leave the safety of the underground halls without a retinue of sentries, the bored and lonely Woodland Prince had wanted to be useful by helping his father’s servants clean, while also desiring to befriend these cheerful and hardworking Elves. Being kind and knowing their isolated Prince sought company, the servants had welcomed it, though they had kept their Prince busy with simple work meant only to appease his desire for utility, allowing Legolas to visit with them while they did the more strenuous, dirtier work required to keep the Elvenking’s halls clean.

Elladan and Elrohir had spent a good deal of time confabulating about when Kalin had thrown a fit upon seeing his Prince singing and laughing while on hands and knees, happily scrubbing the stone floor beside the servants. Kalin’s righteous fulmination on his Prince’s behalf did not stop the Prince from his attempts to be of use to the enormous household, rather than content himself to be a pampered, young princeling with no duties. Of course, when Thranduil learnt from Ninan of how he had seen Legolas aiding Faidnil, the King’s groom, in pressing the wrinkles out of the Elvenking’s robes, the Prince had been questioned and threatened, subsequently spilled the information of his previous acts of lowly cleaning, and thus was thereafter forbidden from accompanying the servants during their chores. Indeed, the twins had told Estel that it had only been Faidnil’s intervention and Kalin’s pleading that kept Thranduil from exacting aggressive retribution against both the servants for letting their Prince get his hands dirty and the Prince for trying to do work below his station.

 _Prince though he may be, Greenleaf has never used his lineage for personal gain or to get out of doing his share,_ the human loved of the Elf, _nor has he ever thought himself better than anyone else because of being a Prince._ Legolas’ humility was one of the reasons Estel had first become infatuated with the Elf, long before the Adan grew old enough to fall in love with him properly, for Legolas had never treated Estel different despite being – to his knowledge at the time, anyway – nothing but a common human child.

And yet, as he distractedly wandered alongside the vigorously attentive Elf, Aragorn thought back to how Legolas had intimated earlier that his desire to be of aid to the villagers extended only insofar as warning them of the haunt and the deaths at the farm. Legolas would lay down his life to save the life of one of his father’s servants the same as he would to save the life of any one of the human villagers, if given the chance; and so, Aragorn knew that it was unlike the selfless Wood-Elf to be so selfish. The Ranger inferred: _He wants us to leave, to let these people handle this by themselves, not because he values his own life over their lives, but because he values my life above everyone else’s life. If nothing else, when I tell him I may have been tainted by the haunt, he will be more inclined to remain, to aid them, for aiding them may be the only way my life is saved._ While he still held a sliver of hope that it was true sickness causing his physical discomfort, each passing moment found him surer that it was not.

Walking in the radiant heat of the sun did not do much to keep the man warm, unfortunately; a violent shiver along his thighs and lower back caused Aragorn to stumble, but since Legolas was looking out across the field to his side, the Silvan did not catch this, and the Adan was glad of it. He did not want to ruin Legolas’ currently peaceful mood – not just yet. _At least if I die from this, whatever it is, I will have Greenleaf beside me,_ he continued to joke in dark humor, trying to lift his flagging spirits, but only managing to depress himself as his mind supplied, _If I fall over dead right now, how long before Greenleaf lies down beside me to die, as well? Would he try to bear my body back to Imladris? Would he wait long enough to take word to Ada and my brothers of my demise? Or would he even last long enough to put me in the ground before he willingly severs his faer from rhaw?_

The answers to these questions were mortifyingly clear to the Ranger, for they all ended in the Wood-Elf’s death, regardless of how long Legolas lasted after the man’s final breath. But Estel was not giving up, of course, and he was not eager to die. He would do everything within his power to survive, so long as it didn’t hurt anyone else by his doing so. Of more importance, however, was that as he knew Legolas’ survival was tied to his own persistence, the Ranger would carry on no matter how poorly he felt, how tired he grew, or how painful his continuance proved to be, because to do otherwise would hasten his own demise, and thereby hasten Legolas’ death. His only true comfort was in his certainty that he would die first. As selfish as it made him feel to be satisfied with this knowledge, Aragorn’s increasingly weary mind and body would happily be eased into accepting his own end if he could be beside the Elf when it happened. The very cold seeping through his flesh seemed to be seeping into his mind, as well, making him feel sluggish and indifferent.

The Ranger shook his head roughly, wishing he could shake his morbid thoughts right out of his muddled head. Legolas had a pattern for how he scanned the fields around them, such that his gaze made a full circle every half minute or so, until he looked ahead of them for a short while, then repeated his scanning a full circle about them again. Estel timed his action so as not to be noticed – when the Elf turned to the left, away from Aragorn, the Adan furtively and rapidly rubbed at his back, where the skin and flesh underneath felt like the hard packed ice of one of the snowmen he and the twins used to make when the human was younger.

_I ought just to tell him now. If I wait too long, I might wait beyond my ability to tell him at all, and then he will not even know why I have died. What if I do not even last until the village?_

As he tried to gather courage to admit to his lover that he thought he might be freezing to death – quite literally – the Ranger was pulled from his saturnine contemplations, for beside him, the Elf suddenly stopped humming, ceased walking, and held his hand out to catch the tunic at the Ranger’s side, inciting Estel to halt. Immediately, the inexplicably exhausted human’s breath quickened and the muscles of his belly tautened in response to Legolas’ prompt. He immediately assumed, _She is near. The haunt has come again._ He was wrong, however, he soon learnt.

“Horses. They are riding hard, by the sounds of the hooves beating the ground,” the laegel explained to the Ranger before Aragorn could ask.

The Ranger intuitively made a quick survey of the area around them. Other than the tall brush and grasses growing between the road and the fields, which were planted with winter wheat that was too short to offer any hiding place, the pair had only the far distant tree line along the creek on the opposite side of the northern field. _Who approaches? If there were anywhere to hide, we could conceal ourselves until we are certain these riders pose no threat._ They had no cause to believe that the oncomers were dangerous except that in the past day or so, the Elf and Ranger had felt to be in constant peril and so would not be surprised should they soon find themselves surrounded by thieving bandits or ravenous Orcs.

Legolas concluded much the same as Estel had to himself, for the Elf said aloud what Aragorn had just been thinking, “I would that there were trees nearby, or even bushes, but the nearest cover is the copse by the creek at the far side of this field. We cannot run there before they arrive, and they would surely see us fleeing. We are exposed, Estel,” the Prince concluded, his hold upon Aragorn’s tunic at the man’s side becoming tighter.

“Then let us be ready for their coming,” he replied with a thin smile of encouragement for his Silvan lover, his smile becoming true when he reminded Legolas, “Besides, you will see them long before they get close enough to be of harm, anyway, Greenleaf.”

Aragorn was right of this, of course, so the Elf nodded and returned the man’s smile. He pulled his bow free from its catch and then selected an arrow to set upon his bowstring, his lithe and long fingers playing over the feathered vanes in impatient agitation. The road varied little from its relatively flat, straight path to the village, which was far enough way that they had no sign of it yet, nor had they yet encountered another home or outbuilding, for they were still within sight of the farmhouse and windmill of the farm from which they had just come; moreover, because of the path’s straightness, as Estel had said, the Elf’s keen vision was unimpeded and he would be able to gauge who advanced upon their position easily enough.

Turning one delicately pointed ear slightly towards the distant road in front of them, the Elf judged, “They have not travelled far, I would guess, because the horses are not tired. Their pace does not falter in the least.”

While the Ranger could hear better than could most humans, he could only just now make out the sound of clattering, shod horse feet, but would not have thought to determine such a detail as had Legolas just done. He once more smiled at the Silvan, who reflexively returned this grin before stepping forward and tilting his head, his dark amber brows furrowing in concentration. Try though he did, the Ranger could barely make out the vague shapes of the riders; he asked the Prince, “What do you see, Greenleaf?”

Without hesitation, the Silvan was able to discern, “There are three of them. All men. Two wear plain and tattered clothing, like the villagers in the farmhouse, and I see no quivers or bows upon those two, but one carries a pitchfork while the other has a shoddy long knife strapped to his saddle. The third wears durable, dark clothing, like that which you wear for travel. He has a crossbow upon his back and a well-fashioned, very heavy longsword is belted to his waist.”

The indistinct shapes were quickly growing closer, but either the riders had yet to notice Estel and Legolas, were not afraid to approach them, or they supposed the could easily take on the two upon getting within reach of the third man’s crossbow. The Ranger hefted his broadsword in hand, its familiar weight soothing to him. Aragorn and Legolas had stepped into battle and similar situations often and made it out alive – the Ranger hoped that this time would be the same, should it come to it. The gnawing, bitter cold creeping up his flesh and clawing painfully into his muscles might hinder him, however, and the human suddenly wished he had already told the Elf of his strange condition so that Legolas would be aware and able to pick up the Ranger’s slack if need be. Nothing would be worse, in Estel’s mind, than if the Wood-Elf were to be injured or killed because Aragorn had been too hardheaded to bare his weakness before now.

Legolas made some noncommittal, surprised sound low in his throat, prompting Estel to ask, “What is it? What else do you see?”

With a quick glance at Estel, the Elf told the Ranger confoundedly, “The one with the longsword has the brightest, reddest hair I have ever seen upon a human, with a long and braided beard to match. He almost looks like a Dwarf – like a Firebeard Dwarf – though he must be as tall as a man to wield that longsword.”

Wielding a longsword was not common amongst most trained soldiers because it required two hands; most soldiers preferred to use a single-handed sword so they could hold a shield with their offhand. It took great strength to wield a heavy, well-made longsword. Estel’s broadsword was technically crafted for use by one hand or two. He rarely made use of a shield, but he had the strength and dexterity to use his weapon singlehandedly, if he desired, so could hold a shield in his offhand if he had need of it. Aragorn personally knew of only one person who preferred longswords to broadswords who also had flaming red hair, a wild and long beard to match, and because of his rubicund hair and his habit of braiding his beard, one was often teased by their companions to be a descendant of the Firebeard Dwarves rather than of the Dúnedain of Arnor.

Further heartening Estel was Legolas’ next detail, for the Elf added with some optimism, as he knew the possible meaning behind this finding, “Estel… the red-haired man’s cloak is clasped with a six-pointed star.”

 _Please let it be,_ the Ranger thought with a hopeful smile, one he shared with Legolas. _If it is Jakob, then there might be others in the village already who are helping the people here, who might know more than do Greenleaf or I know. And if I die, then someone will be able to take up the villagers’ cause if Legolas does not live long enough to aid them, and someone will be able to take word to Imladris of my or our passing,_ he ruminated gladly, his cheerfulness mismatched to his dark ponderings.

Upon seeing the human’s smile, Legolas lowered his bow but kept his arrow affixed upon the string, and then asked, “Do you think he is a fellow Ranger? Might you know him?”

Though he did not sheathe it in case he was mistaken of the man’s identity, the Adan lowered his broadsword to his side so that he would not incite the three horsemen to react violently if Jakob or the two with him did not immediately recognize Aragorn or thought the Wood-Elf to be of threat to them. Settling the tip of his broadsword upon the ground, Estel steadied himself by it in what he hoped to be a secretive manner and assured the Silvan, “Yes, he is a Ranger, I believe, and yes, I know him. Eru smiles down upon us, Greenleaf, if there are Rangers already here.”

Despite Aragorn’s conjecture, the Wood-Elf remained alert for danger; having caught sight of Estel and Legolas, the three wary riders stopped a safe distance away. In franticly relieved delight, Estel mused that the men might assume themselves outside the reach of Legolas’ deadly accurate aim, but if they assumed themselves safe, they were sorely mistaken, for the Wood-Elf could easily kill each of those men with his bow before the first man fell from his saddle. Luckily for them and for Legolas and Estel, the Wood-Elf would not need his bow this time. Estel could just make out the fiery-haired one speaking adamantly to his fellow riders and knew from the Adan’s wild gesticulations that it must be Jakob.

“He said your name and…” Legolas told Estel, his ear now cocked towards the riders as he listened intently to their conversation, his gaze fixed upon them until he continued, “and he told them you were his Chieftain.”

The Ranger nearly laughed, so great was his respite. He sheathed his weapon now, which conveyed to Legolas that there was nothing over which to worry, which caused the Elf to replace both his arrow in its quiver and his bow upon its catch. “It is Jakob. From your description, I hoped it might be, but given our luck as of the last day, I feared to be wrong. It is not surprising at all for Jakob to be in the middle of this mess, I think, and I would be shocked if there are no other Rangers in the midst of it, too.”

The man who Estel believed to be Jakob dismounted, handed his reins to the rider next to him, and with his hands out to show he had no weapons drawn, began walking slowly towards Legolas and Estel.

“Aragorn,” the man said when he was close enough not to have to shout to be heard, while a titanic grin spread upon his haggardly thin face. Estel strode forward to meet the man, extending his hand out to grasp his fellow Ranger’s forearm as Jakob returned the gesture. “By Ilúvatar you got here fast,” Jakob exclaimed, his face lit and animated with the apparent joy he felt to see his Chieftain. “Where are your horses? You couldn’t have run all the way here.”

Aragorn let loose Jakob’s hand and shifted so that he could introduce the Prince, who stood behind them. “Jakob, this is Legolas,” he said, offering no further information, as despite trusting his fellow Ranger, Estel did not think it necessary or appropriate to share that Legolas was the Prince of Mirkwood if Jakob did not already know, a fact of which Aragorn was unsure. “And Legolas,” he finished, “this is Jakob, one of the newest to join the ranks of the Rangers, though certainly not a stripling.”

Jakob offered the Wood-Elf a slight bow of his head and neck, showing his deference to the elder being, and giving Legolas the same joyful smile to have found his Chieftain and another able body to be of help. “Pleased to meet you, your Highness,” Jakob respectfully replied, speaking lowly so that the men behind them would not hear, something for which Estel was grateful but also surprised, since he had not thought the younger Ranger would know of Legolas by name.

“Please. Call me Legolas,” the Silvan absently offered to Jakob, giving the red-haired man only half his notice, for the other half watched the villagers as they dismounted and slowly moved toward where the two Rangers and laegel stood in the middle of the empty road.

The Woodland Prince’s wariness attracted Aragorn’s attention to the two local men, as well, and he wondered what caused Legolas to watch them with such suspicion. The villagers ambled circumspectly closer with their eyes wide and their mouths agape. Estel was suddenly reminded of something that had happened several years ago, when he had stayed the night in an inn in Bree. A young, at one time very pretty woman had entered to do her work as a maid to clean the tavern; she had apparently recently been caught in a house fire or had some accident while cooking, for the thin column of her neck, along one side of her face, and covering the left portion of her nearly scorched hairless scalp were vicious, angry scars from burns that had been given little time to heal. She had set about her work, as would she normally the Ranger had supposed, but upon her entrance, every eye in the barroom had been set on her – including Estel’s gaze. The patrons’ gawking interest in the injured woman had not been entirely unkind except in its persistence and lack of concern for her state of mind to be so watched when she clearly suffered enough already. She had barely begun to wipe down the crumb-riddled and ale-puddled tables ere she began to weep silently and fled the room to avoid the patrons’ inquisitive stares.

The two villagers looked at Legolas in the same way as had the tavern’s patrons looked at the young woman, as if the Elf were some thing that could be gawked at with no regard to Legolas being the unwilling object of their curiosity. For his part, other than how he stoically returned their gazes, the Prince gave no sign of discomfort to be watched in this way, though Estel knew his lover well and so knew Legolas was unnerved by it. At one time, the Silvan would not have been bothered by this insistent scrutiny, for Legolas endured it practically every time he was amidst any Secondborn who had no or few dealings with the Firstborn. And yet, because the Elf had endured the cruelty of men – men who had treated Legolas like a mere object, like a plaything to use and toss away – Aragorn believed the Prince was more perturbed than his insouciant demeanor belied. Irritation and nervousness began to well within him on the Elf’s behalf, which made him miss what it was Jakob was trying to tell him.

“Aragorn?” his fellow Ranger prompted. Jakob followed Estel’s line of sight and noticed what his Chieftain had – that the two other men were gawping at the Silvan with no attempt to hide their nosiness. In a low voice the villagers could not hear, he told both Aragorn and Legolas, though his contrite smile was for the Silvan alone, “I apologize for their ill manners. They mean no harm by it, I’m sure. They have never seen an Elf before, I would wager, and likely thought they never would in their lifetimes.”

“Do not apologize for them, for you are surely right,” the Elf murmured pleasantly, gave Jakob a grateful if thin smile, and dragged his attention reluctantly away from the gawping villagers and to the young Ranger, which incited Estel to try to do the same, though what he would have liked to do was bash the two men’s heads together and tell them to mind their manners. The Prince changed the topic by asking the flamingly red-haired Ranger, “What do you mean when you say that Aragorn arrived here quickly?”

Surreptitiously, Aragorn walked around Legolas and stood beside him, which blocked the Prince from the worst of the two men’s goggling. It was a silly thing to do, he recognized, but Estel could not seem to help himself. He would do anything to keep Legolas from feeling like the mere thing that Cort, Sven, and Kane had made Legolas feel to be. Having just realized the underlying assumption behind Jakob’s earlier statement and thus the import of Legolas’ question now, Estel added, “We have no horses because we were in no hurry. It is only happenstance that we are here at all.”

Giving his Chieftain and the Silvan a confused smile, Jakob shook his head a time or two, answering, “Halbarad wasn’t sure if Lord Elrond would send any aid at all, or even advice, and he said he didn’t know if you were in Rivendell or not, but here you are, and you’ve brought Legolas, who must surely be Elrond’s emissary?” he asked, pausing only for breath and giving Aragorn no time to respond ere he went on, saying, “I only meant that we sent messengers two weeks ago from Bree and they would only have arrived in Rivendell several days ago, assuming all went as planned. Unless you met them along the way? Even coming straight from Rivendell to here takes a week, I’d guess, and that’s on horses at breakneck speed, so how did you get here so fast?” the young Ranger queried again, apparently not grasping the possibility that his Chieftain’s coming was a coincidence – or providence, as it would turn out to be.

Aragorn was only growing more baffled; from the looks of him, Legolas no more understood what Jakob was saying than did Estel. Upon seeing his Chieftain and the Elf’s mystification, Jakob laughed yet again. Estel well knew that laughter was Jakob’s normal reaction to most situations – even dangerous ones, such as striding into battle outnumbered and injured while cackling wildly, which Estel had seen his fellow Ranger do before. Stroking the long braid of his fiery beard with one hand and blatantly fondling the hilt of his longsword with the other, Jakob wondered, “You didn’t read Halbarad’s letter to Lord Elrond? You didn’t meet the messengers?”

“I have been in wilds with Legolas for weeks now.” Realizing that Jakob would ask why they had come here, Aragorn suddenly realized as well that he did not wish to divulge the girl child’s haunt to Jakob – at least, not while the villagers were close enough to hear. The two men might become superstitious upon learning of the Elf’s ability to perceive the dead, newfound as it was, or worse yet, they might somehow hold Legolas accountable for her existence. He attempted to forfend this discussion by dissembling, “It is only chance that we came this way. We were travelling haphazardly through the woods, making a meandering route south and west, enjoying ourselves while scouting the lands between the mountains and the settlements. We had intended to turn north to travel through the South Downs to arrive in Bree by the first snowfall, where we had hoped to find word of Halbarad, actually.”

Jakob clapped a friendly hand upon Estel’s shoulder. With no hint of jesting or hidden sarcasm, the young Ranger told his Chieftain, “Then Eru has guided you here, my friend. Halbarad, Tomas, and myself were in Bree when two men from this village arrived, seeking the assistance of the Rangers. We decided to journey here to offer what aid we could, but before we left Bree, Halbarad sent the riders on to Rivendell to tell their tale with Tomas as their guide, and as bearer of a letter he wrote to beg Lord Elrond’s aid and advice, but also to ascertain if you were there. We sorely need your guidance, Aragorn,” Jakob told his Chieftain, all hints of joking and smiling abruptly absent from his pale, freckled visage.

Rubbing his cold hands together, which was immediately noted by the ever perceptive Wood-Elf, Estel considered, _Assuming they found no trouble and made good time, the riders should have been welcomed in the valley days ago, which means that if Ada has sent any help, they will be on their way already and could arrive within days._ The thought sent another welcome, warm wave of relief coursing over his chilled flesh. _Elladan and Elrohir will come out of curiosity but also on Ada’s behest, as they are as knowledgeable as Ada in most topics. Glorfindel may even come with some of his soldiers._ He had yet to hear what was happening in this village, but the promise of his brothers or any of his father’s people arriving to be of help to them was enough to ease the Adan’s fear for Legolas’ welfare and his own well-being, but also for the entire population of the settlement.

He smiled up at Anor and then out across the fields of winter wheat, alluding, “And you are welcome to my guidance, as always, although I doubt I will have much counsel to offer if the reason you have travelled to this village is the same reason we altered our course from north to Bree to south to the village.”

The younger Ranger nodded eagerly, wishing to hear what had transpired for his Chieftain as much as he wanted to tell Aragorn of his and their fellow Rangers’ tale. “Come, let us confer, but let us walk while we do so. There is a farm in the direction from which you came that we wish to check for survivors,” Jakob suggested, nodding towards the distant house Legolas and Estel had left only a short while ago. “It is the last of the farms we need to check in this area, and sits farther out than most. They have not been seen nor heard from for weeks, but the villagers say that is not uncommon. They tell me that a young family lives there with small children, which is why they do not travel into the settlement proper often, and so might not yet have heard what is happening.”

Already aware of the answer – at least in part – Aragorn asked nonetheless, “You seek survivors? Survivors of what?”

“I wish we knew. We cannot find any cause of death. But Aragorn,” Jakob fervently intoned, holding a hand out as if to stop his Chieftain for a moment, though the three of them still stood motionless in a haphazard circle in the middle of the road, “it is not natural. A third to a half the village and the people who live surrounding have died over the course of the last month or so. We have counted over eighty deceased villagers thus far, though now that we have extended our range of search, I expect we will find more.” 

 _A third to half of them?_ he boggled, sharing a concerned glance with Legolas to hear this. While they had feared that something dire might be affecting the area, neither of them had considered it might be this serious.

“No one lives on the farm of which you speak,” the Wood-Elf offered with solemn regret to share this information. “We have only just come from there. A woman, man, an older man, an infant, and a young girl are all dead, as are all of their animals. The oddity of their demises is why we are on this road, as we had thought to inform their kith in the settlement of their deaths.”

“That is wretched news. The two children are dead, as well, you say?” The younger Ranger hung his head sadly, his bright hair glinting in the sunlight. He pulled at the braids in his beard and spared a glance for the two villagers who had been riding with him, and then amended, “Let us return to the village then.” In a much louder voice, Jakob informed the two men with whom he had travelled for this task, both of whom had not yet stared at Legolas long enough to have their curiosity appeased, it seemed to Estel, for neither one’s eyes left the Silvan when Jakob spoke to them, saying, “The farm is devoid of the living, unfortunately. We return to the village.”

Without argument, for Aragorn and Legolas had been headed to the human settlement anyway, the three walked towards the locals, who obeisantly and wordlessly waited for the two Rangers and Elf to walk ahead of them before they led the horses along behind.

Jakob repeated, clapping Estel on the back again, which Estel could not even feel, so numb had his skin become, “Eru has guided you to us, Aragorn.”

 _If Eru has guided us here,_ he told himself, wishing he could take the Silvan’s hand to comfort the disquiet upon Legolas’ face, _then Eru must have decided it is my time to die._


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things: first, quite a bit of the work for this story has been lost when my last pc failed. I am still up in the air about whether to rewrite it. Second, this posting is half the intended chapter; I ran out of patience in editing and decided to post something before my irritation caused me not to post anything. 
> 
> So again, we shall see. Enjoy.

Legolas knew that he was in no danger from the men around him. He was faster, stronger, more experienced than were they, and unlike recent times, the Elf was now acutely wary of the humans surrounding him on all sides.  _Estel is here,_ he told himself, blatantly ignoring the fact that when Sven and Cort had abused him in the woods, Estel had been there, as well, but also ignoring how weak he felt to be to need his Adan lover’s presence as assurance of his own safety. The men walking behind him did not stare at him with prurient need or lust for his destruction – not as the merchants had looked at him. Still, he could feel their curious gazes upon his back. Before being attacked in Lake-town, the Prince would not have second-guessed the wisdom of walking into a town full of humans. He was accustomed to such looks from inquisitive Edain. This ought to be no different.

With a start, the Prince realized that since Kane’s death in the Elvenking’s halls, now was the first time he had been in the company of humans other than Estel. Not only this, but he was set to enter a village filled with humans, while he was more than likely the only Elf to be found for leagues. He comforted himself by saying, _If Elrond sends aid, I will not be alone with them, at least._

The Elf had no guarantee that his Minyatar would send aid by way of Elves; however, he thought it likely that the twins would come, as did Aragorn, though they had not spoken of it between them. Jakob had told them that Halbarad was unsure if the Peredhel Lord of Imladris would send help, but Legolas knew that Elrond would do so, for he was ever willing to be of service to any in need – especially the honorable Dúnedain – and over the years, the twins had often travelled and worked with the Rangers, even long before they had fostered Estel in their home.

Being that Elrond had no clue the Ranger and Prince were amongst those seeking their aid, the Wood-Elf mused with a thoughtful smile, _Elladan and Elrohir will be surprised to find Estel and I are here, should they come._ There would be much for he and the Ranger to tell the twin Lords of Imladris, while hopefully, the two Noldor would have some idea how to end the strange occurrences in this village. _I doubt Minyatar coming himself, but I think Elladan and Elrohir will come,_ he decided again, realizing that he very much wished most for the company of the twins, who could help him to care for the Ranger, since Estel seemed to be getting sick.Of the twins, he thought with another smile, _Their curiosity will bring them, even if Elrond does not insist upon it._ He suddenly worried nonetheless, _As much as I will be glad for their companionship and assistance, I hope their coming does not place them in danger, too._

As they walked, Legolas kept his mind ever upon the haunt, feeling for her presence, although he could not be confident that he would sense her being ere she showed. Casting a wary glance backwards to check for the Adan girl’s specter, and seeing that he was right and the two villagers were indeed staring at him still, he ruminated, _I am glad that Estel did not tell them of the girl’s haunt._ Eventually, Aragorn’s Dúnedain and whoever arrived from Rivendell – if anyone came at all – would need to know the details of Legolas’ seeing the haunt if they were to piece together the cause of the strange events here, but the Silvan didn’t think putting it off for now would make any difference.

Having checked the quiet countryside around them and having found nothing, the Elf turned his attention to the person beside him, noting of Aragorn, _He is still shivering. He tries to hide it, I think, but his shaking hands give him away._ Despite their current company, the Prince desired to stop, wrap the Ranger in a blanket, and ensconce Estel within his embrace to share his interminable warmth with the Adan. Earlier, when he had convinced Aragorn to rest by the creek for a while, the man’s relentless shivering had stopped when blanketed and lying upon Legolas’ thigh, so the Prince thought that it would be a fine way to keep Aragorn warm, if they had the opportunity. _He will likely not be able to rest once we get to the village. The people there will want answers from Estel, though he has none to give, and Halbarad will want to speak with him. Soon, though, I will find some way to force Estel to take rest, to get warm._

As he half listened to Jakob telling Estel about the activities of the other Edain in Aragorn’s retinue of Rangers, Legolas found himself pondering something else – up until now, he and Estel had either been in the company of Elves or alone. The Eldar were not as judgmental in matters of the heart as were the Edain, such that amongst the Firstborn two male lovers did not cause a scandal, though it was still rare – and especially so between a male Adan and a male Elf, as bonds between an Adan and Elf were rare enough as it were. But amid the Edain, there was prejudice for two males who enjoyed together the pleasures of the body, and more so for those who bonded as mates. The Secondborn were strange in this way, by Legolas’ thinking. For the Eldar, there was little difference between a male and a female Elf. They were similarly as capable of learning and of equal intelligence, they could hold the same power or positions, and though there were obviously distinct differences in their bodies, those differences did not affect either sex’s abilities when it came to their chosen professions. For the Secondborn, however, males typically were the fighters, the leaders, and the breadwinners, while females tended to be relegated to roles deemed less important and less demanding, as if Edain women were incapable of doing the same as the men. Likewise, bonding between the Edain had what seemed to Legolas to be an incomprehensible set of rules about wealth and power, about family names and breeding, which meant that two males were breaking all those rules should they choose to pair off rather than seek out conventional marriage between man and wife. He had thought nothing of any of this prior to now, for though while he had considered what the Eldar of Imladris and Eryn Galen would think of his choosing a male, human mate, it had not occurred to him that one day he and Estel would be amongst the Ranger’s kind, where their bonding might be a problem.

 _Would Estel be embarrassed if his fellow Rangers knew that he has chosen me as his mate? Would they castigate him or think less of him? Would they think him perverted and base?_ The very thought of Estel being ashamed of his love for Legolas made the Wood-Elf’s grief-tender chest resume its ache. While he did not doubt Aragorn’s love for him, the Elf suddenly wondered if it was something Estel would want to keep private, and so made the decision to keep his hands to himself, to avoid calling the Ranger “meleth nin” or any other familiar sobriquet, and to ask Estel later what he would have Legolas do concerning the matter. He did not want to place Aragorn in an awkward position of losing the respect of his friends, or place either of them in danger from the sometimes violent ways in which the Edain were wont to enforce the rules of their often unforgiving society.

The sun told the Elf that it was late afternoon. During their walk so far, Jakob had spoken a little more of what they would find upon arriving in the village, but had decided to leave the bulk of explaining their circumstances to Halbarad, rather than have Halbarad repeat everything in case Jakob neglected to tell their Chieftain something of import. Thus, for the last hour, the four humans and one Elf had travelled in a comfortable but wary quiet – a quiet broken only by the nickering of the horses and the odd question or reminiscence by Jakob or Estel about some exploit they had shared or that concerned one of their other fellow Rangers and their current whereabouts. 

 _There it is,_ the Wood-Elf gladly noted, seeing that they were finally coming upon the settlement. As glad as he was to be there, his anxiety began to multiply, for even from this far away, Legolas saw people everywhere. He would soon be amongst them, enduring their curiosity in a greater measure than he did from the two men staring at him from behind where he walked.

“Here it is,” Jakob told his Chieftain and the Prince, mirroring Legolas’ thoughts when he warned quietly, “It is small, but all those whom we could convince to leave their homes are crowding the village. And I doubt any of them have seen an Elf, either,” he said to Legolas in barely more than a whisper, knowing that the Elf could hear him while the two men lingering slightly behind the two Rangers and Silvan could not. He reminded the Prince, as if he thought Legolas might judge the people in this village poorly for their curiosity, “They are good folk, I promise. Give them a while of staring at you, and they will eventually lose interest.”

He nodded but said nothing in return. So quickly that the two Edain behind them would think it was an accident, Estel bumped slightly into the Wood-Elf, his fingers momentarily curling around Legolas’ digits, ere he stepped away. Aragorn turned to Legolas, giving the Silvan an encouraging smile, and making the Elf think that Estel must now be able to read his mind, for Jakob’s reassurances had only fomented the Prince’s anxiety, while Estel’s brief touch served to dampen it. No, he wasn’t afraid of these people, for he had no doubt the fiery haired Ranger was right and these people were good people; even still, Legolas could not seem to quell the dread welling within him.

Having walked for so long with only the hint of homes in the distance along winding, dirt paths leading into spacious fields and small copses of woods, the first house they passed appeared odd because it sat right by the flagstoned road. As they walked farther within the settlement, the space between the houses grew slighter, until the homes were side by side, with only small vegetable gardens and hedgerows between them. Legolas became steadily uneasier as they entered the outermost ring of the houses in the condensed area considered the village proper. Everywhere there were people of all ages, sizes, and colors, some wearing drab and filthy clothes, others wearing finely made garb. Some carried weapons while others carried babes – both of which were held onto with the same fervor. Jakob earlier told them that the villagers were tightly knit and willing to share their homes with each other, so those who lived on farms farther out from the center of the village were now sharing living space, which made the small settlement seem like a bustling ant hive teeming with busy beings. Women were washing clothes and young children – sometimes in the same tubs – and hanging sopping wet clothing upon every available line, fence, branch, and bush. Men were roasting meat over huge open fires, splitting firewood, and from the acrid, foul smell drifting through the pleasant autumn air, Legolas could tell that somewhere some of the villagers were making tallow candles.

No matter their tasks, every single man, woman, and child stopped what they were doing to gawk at the three men and lone Elf as they walked down the lane between the dwellings. Legolas would like to have believed that they stared because they were hopeful of Aragorn’s arrival, since Jakob had told the Elf and Ranger that Halbarad had guaranteed these people aid was coming, but the Prince knew they mostly stared at him. Children pointed at the Wood-Elf, who must’ve looked strange to them; the women whispered to each other behind cupped hands, while a few of the younger ones gave the striking Wood-Elf and equally handsome Estel shy, tittering smiles; and both young and old, the men stood taller and squared their shoulders, as if to show the Elf they were not intimidated by him or of his being stronger, older, and more experienced than were they – or perhaps also to show they were ready for the work necessary to end this ordeal, work that they thought Legolas and Estel would bring to them, since they assumed the newly arrived Ranger and Elf must be the help Halbarad had promised.

And yet, none of the villagers seemed afraid of him – not that Legolas wanted for them to be, of course. Instead, a buzz of hopeful excitement began to stir through the boisterous amalgamation of kith, kin, and neighbors, until people from across the village who had not seen the party’s approach came running towards them to get a glimpse of the Chieftain of the Dúnedain and the mysterious, golden Firstborn whom they thought would save their lives and livelihoods.

Again, Legolas felt Aragorn’s hand brush against his in a brief but comforting, clandestine display of support.

 _This place is smaller than Lake-town,_ he told himself, then promptly regretted thinking of the floating Edain settlement there, for it only dredged up memories better left buried. If the houses and yards were stacked upon each other in layers, the entirety of the settlement wouldn’t fill half of his father’s under-the-mountain halls. As had the farmhouse of the dead family and most of the houses they had since passed, the villager’s homes were built on limestone foundations with thatch roofs; well-made and snug, the homes showed the paucity of their occupants’ wealth, but as had the farmhouse earlier, the villagers maintained their homes with loving care. All in all, the village was small and quaint – just the kind of place that the Wood-Elf normally enjoyed visiting when it was his own kith, for the Silvan had similar such settlements within the Mirkwood Forest, though their houses were different.

Onwards they walked, with Jakob now leading the way. A few people called out to Jakob, but the red-haired Ranger dismissed their questions with promises to speak to all of them later, and eventually, they progressed into the center of the village, where the scant commerce of their settlement occurred. The Wood-Elf heard the clattering and smelled the fumes of the blacksmith long before they came to it. The heavily muscled man and his young apprentice inside the wall-less forge room were the only ones who did not stop their work to view the Prince and men as they walked towards the center of town, but the old hound dog within lifted his head long enough to sniff the air as they walked by him, at least.

As had Estel told Legolas, the Elf could find no tavern or pub, no inn, and only a few shops; from the signs hanging over their doors, the laegel saw a tailor, an herbalist, and a general trading post. In the center of all of this bustle was the village green, which had likely once been much larger than was it now, but had diminished as the township grew and the space was used for homes. Normally, goats or other animals might be grazing on this communal property, but as of the moment, the foot-flattened grass was occupied by about twenty children ranging from toddlers to adolescents nearing marrying age. Aware that something peculiar and dangerous was going on around them but still innocent enough to be capable of ignoring it in favor of fun and play, some of the children were chasing each other in games of tag or tossing a ball made of hard leather, while others were sitting on the ground around an elderly woman in a chair, who was reading from a tattered book bound with green hued leather. From what he could make of the title, the Elf thought she might be reading from a collection of fairy tales.

The gurgling, clear creek ran straight through this open meadow, thereby cutting the village neatly in half. While the waterway was shallow enough to be waded through if needed, an arcing, wide bridge joined the two halves of the green and thus the two halves of the settlement. It was to this bridge that Jakob led them. The villagers with whom they had walked did not follow the two Rangers and Prince as they crossed; instead, they remained with the ever-growing gaggle of people who had come to see the strangers and had followed in their footsteps upon their walk through the village, all of them thinking that they might soon receive information or gossip from the newcomers. As Legolas followed Estel and Jakob, he heard over the din as the two men with whom they had walked to the village began answering the questions put to them about the new arrivals. He lost track of them and their conversations when Jakob finally veered off the path and into the small yard of a clapboard building.

 _A schoolhouse,_ the Elf decided with a bit of surprise.

In human cities like Gondor, the children of the city were welcome to the most basic of educations, such as lessons on reading, writing, and maths, though many parents kept their progeny – especially their girl children – at home to learn the family business, whatever that business might be, or to aid in the household chores. Amidst the Elves, mothers and fathers generally taught their own children unless the parents were unable because of their own duties. In Imladris, for example, Elrond had responsibilities beyond the simpler obligations of most parents, especially so after Celebrian had sailed, and so the Peredhel had shared the duty of educating Arwen, Elrohir, and Elladan – and Legolas when he was in the valley, Estel when he came to live with Elrond’s family – with Glorfindel, Erestor, and other erudite persons. When younger, Legolas also had tutors rather than lessons from his own Ada. Other than how to swim and how to take a beating, the only lesson Legolas’ father had ever taught him was how to discern the difference between Dorwinion wine and regular, “swill” wine without tasting, by judging its color and the way in which it clung to the sides of the wine cup. The Elf would have guessed that in a village this remote most of the children took up their family’s trade of farming, and so was pleasantly amazed to find that they had a schoolhouse.

 _Estel said this place was small, yes, but it is very comfortable, well equipped, and full of people who truly seem to care for each other,_ he thought, pausing in following Jakob and Estel to cast a glance behind and around them, and finding a sea of faces all staring back at him. _It makes it even more a shame that such ill should befall them, I think, since they seem to take such great pride in their homes, their work, and each other._

“Greenleaf?” Estel whispered. Quickly, Legolas turned back to where Aragorn waited for him after having noticed the Silvan had stopped. With the same apprehensively questioning face he had shown each time upon asking the Prince if he sensed the girl child’s haunt, Aragorn now asked somewhat vaguely, as he did not want for anyone to overhear them speaking of a ghost, “Is all well?”

“Yes. Nothing has changed,” he answered in similarly ambiguous fashion, knowing just what Estel was asking him, ere he caught up to the two Rangers by climbing the few steps to the porch of the schoolhouse.

Jakob had taken notice of the strange interaction between his Chieftain and the Elf but had the courtesy not to ask of it. “Halbarad has commandeered the schoolhouse. Some of the children and their widowed mothers sleep here with Halbarad and I as guardians,” Jakob explained with a wry grin as he lifted his hand in the air, making a fist of it that paused just inches away from the wooden door. “I think they believe they will be safest with us. I hope they are right. We are also storing food and other goods here for safekeeping. If all this isn’t settled before the first heavy snowfall, planning and rationing will be needed to get the villagers through the winter.”

Estel nodded his approval of this explanation and of his fellow Rangers’ forethought. With a single knock, Jakob announced their entry; he did not wait for an answer but flung the door open, announcing with a laugh in his voice, “You won’t believe who I found, Halbarad.”

Standing over a pile of bags of wheat flour, Halbarad appeared to be taking stock of their supplies, but turned to see who it was entering, saying as he did so, “If this is one of your pranks, Jakob, I’m locking you outside in the cold tonight. Now is not the time for…” he began ere he saw whom it was straggling behind Jakob into the room.

The Elf did not know Halbarad well, but he had met the elder Ranger several times in Imladris, a time or two before Estel was even born. Halbarad was an older man with grizzled and gruff features and a similarly brusque demeanor to match. The odd thought occurred to Legolas, _I wonder if this is how Estel will look when he is older._ It was not an unpleasant thought, for as were all of the Rangers, Halbarad was well built and strong, lean and crafty, and handsome because of his weathered appearance rather than in spite of it. Moreover, Halbarad had spent more years as a Ranger in the wilds than had Estel spent living. While Legolas thought Estel to be a fine specimen of Edain-kind, he of course loved the Ranger for more than just his physical appearance, and would love the man no less if he wasn’t as lucky as Halbarad to retain his good looks but eventually became a stooped over, arthritic, grouch of an elder. Legolas hid a smile at the imagining of Estel as a crotchety old curmudgeon, thinking, _I hope Estel lives long enough to becomes as wrinkled as is Halbarad._ The uncalled for reminder of his lover’s mortality immediately ruined his temporary amusement.

“Well, I hope you’ll not lock _us_ out, anyway,” Estel replied to the elder Adan, striding forward to greet him. “I’m freezing already.”

Even though he was older than was Estel, Halbarad respected Aragorn as their Chieftain; thus, it was with deference that he came to his two younger fellow Rangers. His smile was meager but his pleasure was apparent nonetheless in how he gripped Estel’s arm hard in welcome. “Aragorn,” the elder said warmly. “I cannot tell you how relieved I am that you are here.” The grey-haired, grey-eyed Ranger then turned to the Silvan Elf, saying in greeting, “I am pleased you are here, as well, Prince Legolas. Well met. We need all the help we can get.”

He returned Halbarad’s handclasp, saying, “It has been years since last I saw you, Master Human. I wish these were better circumstances for us to meet again.”

In the dim light of the scantly lit schoolroom, the smile drifted from Halbarad's face, which became dour and serious again. “You have the right of it, for these are dire circumstances, indeed.”

With a motion of his head, the elder invited them to follow him. They walked to a small group of short-legged tables around which child-sized chairs were gathered. Gladly, Aragorn took a seat in one, his long legs bunched up until his knees were nearly under his chin; Halbarad took one across from his Chieftain. Legolas remained standing. To Jakob, who had followed them, Halbarad commanded, “Go calm the villagers. I imagine they are beside themselves with speculation about just who Aragorn and Legolas are and why they are here.”

“I shall,” Jakob answered, dipping his head in gracious response to the order. Oddly enough, the strangely merry Ranger began whistling as he walked from the schoolhouse, leaving Estel, Legolas, and Halbarad alone to confer.

“To save us time and confusion, let me first say that Legolas and I are not here because of the message you sent Lord Elrond,” Estel preempted the elder Ranger’s questions. A mild shiver ran up the Adan’s back, which caused Legolas to walk towards the man out of instinctual desire to find a way to warm him, though the Elf stopped himself before he did something that might give away the less than platonic bond between them. Not having noticed this at all, Aragorn continued, “We were travelling to Bree to find you for word of what was happening in and around Eriador, in fact, when strange occurrences led us to a farm nearby; the deaths of those at the farm incited us to find the village, which is when we met Jakob upon the road. Jakob told us some of what you know, but let us hear it from you.”

As had Jakob said earlier, Halbarad said now, “Then Ilúvatar has sent you to us, my friend. Or fate, perhaps, though one could argue that they are one and the same.” Starting from the widow’s peak upon his forehead of long, silver hair that he kept tied back in a tail at the nape of his neck, Halbarad swept his hand down his face in a rough motion, pausing to squeeze the bridge of his nose ere he palmed his mouth and then finished by rubbing his throat. With a heaving sigh, the elder Adan elucidated to Legolas and Estel, “Eighty lives lost that we know of. _That we know of_ ,” he repeated with emphasis, saying, “because there are farms on the outskirts of the settlement for which we have no accounting just yet, though Jakob and several volunteers are searching for these outliers to try to bring them into the village for their own safety. Not everyone has been keen to join their brethren here, and of those that have not, most are now counted amongst the dead.”

A pitcher of water and several clean, ceramic tumblers sat upon the table. Halbarad first poured one for himself, and then, as an afterthought, offered to pour for his Chieftain and the Silvan, both of whom refused politely. The elder Adan continued after draining his water in one long, noisy gulp, “Other than a toddler who we think died of a snake bite, of the dead, there are no signs for the cause of their deaths. No injury, no blood, no indications of poison. The herbalist here in the village, who is also their only healer, says that she can find no indication that any of the dead were sick. Besides a few fevers and one child who had whooping cough, all of whom have bettered with the healer’s aid, there is no illness spreading to blame the deaths upon, either.”

Halbarad paused for a moment – perhaps he did so to let his Chieftain and the Elven Prince ponder this news, but to Legolas, it looked as if Halbarad were deciding how best to explain that for which they had no explanation. When the silence grew long and Halbarad only continued to stare at the far wall, lost in his thoughts, Aragorn prompted softly, “But you have brought some of the people into the village?”

The elder Adan turned his attention back to Aragorn and Legolas. “Even though they sent to Bree for our aid, the villagers were not ready to follow most of our suggestions at first – at least, not until we convinced their healer of our intentions. But then, we were merely making wild guesses, trying to save as many lives as we could without knowing what was killing everyone, and they could probably tell it.”

Halbarad cleared his throat and began tapping his fingers against the wooden planks of the table before him in mild agitation, saying, “We insisted that the townspeople boil their water before drinking it, to remove contaminant. We have tried keeping them from eating their own locally grown grain and other foods, in case it has been poisoned or become rancid, but it made no difference either way. A curfew has been set so that everyone is supposed to be within their homes after dark – a voluntary curfew, of course. We’ve asked around: no strangers have come through the village recently, no visiting relatives of whom anyone is aware. Nothing out of the ordinary has been seen by anyone in the weeks leading up to these deaths and nothing in the weeks since they started. I have pled with them to leave the area for now to save their lives, and while a few of them who have kin elsewhere have left, most refuse to leave their homes, their farms, and their livelihoods. They have survived here for years fighting to retain what little they have and will not willingly give it up now. It is a noble cause, to be sure, and one that they are willing to die for, but I for one would rather it not be so.”

Legolas found himself standing behind Estel. He longed to put his hands upon the Adan’s shoulders, to offer his touch to the man, who was still shivering ever so slightly even after sitting for a while now in the pervasive warmth of the well-heated schoolhouse. _If I were to touch his skin, I bet I would find it to be frigid._ He would not forsake his promise to refrain from evincing his bond with Aragorn, however, unless the man did so first. So instead, the Prince forced himself to walk away to the crackling fireplace. Soon, though, without conscious thought, he found himself pacing back to Estel.

“All we truly know of what is killing these people is from something that happened two nights ago.” Halbarad fiddled with the rim of his emptied tumbler as he spoke; Legolas had not spent much time with the elder Adan, but from how Estel watched Halbarad’s fidgeting and how Estel seemed to be growing evermore restless the longer Halbarad fiddled with the cup, the Prince thought that it might be an ominous sign for the older man to be doing so.

Finally, the elder clasped his hands together in his lap and told his Chieftain, “On a smaller farm just beyond the village’s outskirts there lies a house in which a dozen of the same family decided to stay together, rather than with the rest of us. The night was warm, so they had no fire lit. I had implored everyone to keep lamps and candles lit during the night. However, this family had run out of candles and had no oil for their lamps. We know this because they sent their eldest son to town just before sunset to obtain candles from a neighbor. He apparently dawdled in returning, as young men are wont to do, by flirting with a girl he has his eye on. When he returned to the house after sunset, all of his family was dead – his parents, his siblings, his mother’s parents, and two cousins whom his parents were raising as their own. Again, there were no injuries, nothing was eaten after he left, he thinks, and he ate the same stew as did they that night for their supper. As soon as the sun rose, we searched for tracks around the house, fed their water and stew to a goat to see if it was poisoned… nothing.”

Aragorn resettled himself upon the too small chair in the effort to get comfortable and inquired, “Why the candles and lamps lit at night? Why the curfew?”

Halbarad gave the younger Ranger a somewhat self-deprecating grin, as if he were chagrined to admit this, “A hunch on my part, I suppose. Keeping them inside and together after dark means that everyone is accounted for. And as far as I can suss out, all the deaths have happened at night. The light is so that if something or someone entered to do them harm, some animal or creature or person, then they won’t be caught unawares. But since I convinced them to keep their fires and candles going through the night, there have been no further deaths – at least, for those who have kept their houses lit, I mean.”

His first thought was of Orcs, who avoided the light, but the Orcs did not fear the light of fires and candles; no, the Orcs merely hated the light of Anor and thus avoided travelling in the daylight. _But Orcs would have left tracks. They would have slashed and gouged and maimed their way through the family. They would have burnt the house down after looting it. Human raiders or thieves might come in the night, but why murder an entire family of poor farmers?_

Thinking along the same lines as was Legolas, Aragorn asked, “Nothing was taken or stolen? Nothing destroyed?”

“Not a thing. The boy said that his father kept a few coins in a jar on the table, right out in the open. They were still there when he returned to find them dead.” Shaking his head at his own confusion, Halbarad knew just what Aragorn had been wondering, and so denied, “I doubt it was raiders of any sort. Even the most adept sneak thief would leave footprints – unless it was an Elf, who is the only being I know of that can walk that softly,” he amended, giving Legolas an apologetic grimace, as if the Prince would take offense for the implication that any of his kind would commit such atrocities. “But then, what cause would an Elf have for halving the population of a human village? These people have never done anyone any wrong, from what I can gather, other than simple sorts of mischief. Besides, although not as good as you, Jakob and I are fairly adept at tracking, and we would likely have found an Elf’s footprint. I’m telling you, Aragorn, there was nothing. Not a single track or sign to go by.”

Absently, Legolas rubbed his hands together as he thought, _What creature fears the light and can kill without leaving any marks? What could slaughter a whole family without any of them being able to flee, or any of them fighting off their assailant? None of this makes any sense._

For a while, the two Rangers sat in silence, while Legolas began pacing to the fireplace and then back to Estel, again and again, his thoughts jumbled, until Halbarad broke the silence, saying, “But tell me – what you brought you here, Aragorn, if not our messengers? You said strange events led you to the farm. Maybe something you have found can help us,” the elder Ranger hoped.

Aragorn twisted in his seat to look to Legolas, who knew just what his lover was silently asking of him. _He wants to tell Halbarad all of what has happened to us. Or what has happened to me, I suppose._

With a minute nod of his head, the Elf gave the Ranger his consent to tell Halbarad what they knew. 


	10. Chapter 10

_How best to tell Halbarad all of this without making Greenleaf sound like a madman?_ he wondered. Halbarad was not known amongst their peers for his sense of humor or imagination, but for his acute skills at reasoning and strict pragmatism. _I can’t even guess as to whether he will laugh, thinking I am jesting, or if he will chide me for wasting time on illusory explanations._

Estel wound his arms around his chest. He hoped the Wood-Elf would not see his purpose for doing so, as the Ranger was chilled and wanted desperately to warm himself. Again, he shifted to look to Legolas, who gave him a brief but encouraging smile, evincing to the Ranger that the Elf was prepared for any disbelief or ridicule that arise from Halbarad’s learning of Legolas’ encounter with a haunt. Ever perceptive, Halbarad took note of the interaction between the younger Adan and the Silvan Elf but waited patiently for his Chieftain to speak.

Finally, Aragorn decided it wisest just to relate the facts. “While travelling our roundabout way to Bree, we came across a lake a day’s walk from here, where we ended up staying for several weeks. A pleasant lake, it was, and because at the time I’d forgotten about the existence of this village, we thought we were far from any settlements. During the weeks of our stay at the lake, however, Greenleaf felt we were being watched,” the Ranger spoke, but realizing from Halbarad’s furrowed brows that he did not know to whom Estel referred when he said the Silvan’s common tongue nickname, an epithet no one but Elrond’s family used for the Prince, Aragorn revised, “Legolas. Legolas felt as if we were being watched – a fact which eventually prompted our departure, though it was time for us to move along anyhow. Along our way the morning of our leaving the lake, Legolas saw something unusual, something _otherworldly_ , and we halted from approaching it out of fear that it was dangerous.”

Here, Estel paused. When first he had learnt from Legolas that the Elf thought he saw a child in the forest, Aragorn had treated his lover as if the Silvan had lost his wits. He did not doubt the Elf now, of course, and it was important to Aragorn that Halbarad not doubt Legolas, either. Not only was Halbarad’s belief necessary for the survival of the village and its people, but also, Estel would not endure anyone – even Halbarad, whom he esteemed in a manner similar to Glorfindel, Erestor, and Elrond – to question Legolas’ sanity. To his relief, Halbarad did not laugh or make any snide comment, causing Aragorn to decide, _After spending time in this village with its odd occurrences, perhaps Halbarad is more open to ghostly explanations, after all._

“Otherworldly?” the elder asked to prompt his reticent younger into continuing his story.

“A ghost. A haunt,” the Wood-Elf interjected, not bothering to soften his assumption as Estel had planned to do, but cutting right to the quick. “A human girl child’s haunt, to be precise. She was nearly colorless, wearing a simple dress, no shoes, and her pale hair was unbound. Where her eyes ought to have been were two sockets filled with a rubicund light like the coals in a bonfire. Though it was morning, no sunlight touched her, and while it is only intuition causing me to draw this conclusion, I felt upon seeing her that her very presence was evil, her being a void into which life might vanish.”

Halbarad was listening intently to this tale, his lined and thin face showing every one of his long, hard lived years; he asked Estel, “You saw this, too?”

“No. I could not see her.” The younger Ranger did not reveal how he had at first thought Legolas might be hallucinating, for it would only open up a discussion about why he had thought so, and his thinking thusly was based upon the Elf’s torment and sorrow. Halbarad had no right to such information. Moreover, he did not want to cast any doubt upon Legolas’ lucidity so that no one would have any cause to distrust their story. “Where Legolas said the girl stood, I saw nothing out of the ordinary.”

To his relief, Halbarad did not seem to doubt the Prince in the least. In fact, Aragorn had the impression that Halbarad believed Legolas more readily than he would have if Estel had told Halbarad that _he_ had seen the specter and not Legolas, for as with many of the Secondborn, Halbarad held great stock in what one of the Firstborn said. In Aragorn’s experience, many Edain espoused the misinformation that the Eldar possessed a numinous knowledge of which humans were incapable. Perhaps this was true for some subjects, but having lived most of his life amongst the Elves, Aragorn knew that the Eldar were only more knowledgeable about certain topics because they had lived lives long enough to experience and study them in greater detail than their human counterparts, while they also shared this information with each other readily, and so therefore had a plethora of knowledgeable persons upon which to rely. Thus, the Eldar’s eruditeness on many topics was not because they were born with such knowledge or that they were gifted with an innate ability to discern the mystical.

A zealous gleam lit the elder Adan’s eyes when he looked to Legolas – a look that reminded Estel of how a cat’s eyes might blaze before it pounced upon a mouse. From the tabletop, the elder grabbed his empty cup in hand, though he only held it absently as he asked the Woodland Prince, “Did she speak to you? What did she do?”

“Nothing. She stared at us. Or at me, I think, because I believe she realized I could see her.” As he spoke, Legolas’ voice grew softer until Halbarad leant forward across the table so not to miss a single word of what the Elf said. In truth, the haunt had disappeared when Estel had dragged Legolas to the ground to gain his attention, but the Silvan only explicated simply, “One moment she was there, the next she was gone.”

Halbarad looked down, noticed he held his cup, and gingerly placed it upon the table. As had Legolas wondered earlier of the elder man, Estel found it odd for Halbarad to fidget, for the seasoned Ranger had patience that might outlast even an Elf’s forbearance. When Halbarad looked back up, Legolas paced a few steps away in vexation at Halbarad’s intense gawking. Aragorn sensed his lover’s unwillingness to divulge the entirety of what had happened next and also felt the Silvan’s discomfort to be the sole focus of Halbarad’s scrutiny.

The Wood-Elf strode to the crackling fireplace and back to Aragorn; for a moment, the Ranger thought the Silvan might walk to stand behind him, to place his hands upon Aragorn’s shoulders, for Legolas’ hands lifted as if to do just that. At the last moment, though, the Elf turned around and paced back to the fire, his boots uncharacteristically loud as they clacked upon the wooden floor, and he said, “To be honest, out of fear for this specter that Estel could not even see coming should it attack us, I insisted we flee the area with all haste, and because I felt we were still being watched, and thus she was still with us, we did not stop our flight except once to eat. We headed west because that was our original intent, until Aragorn recalled the existence of this very village. He said we might question the villagers as to whether anyone else had experienced anything similar, and I agreed.”

“And so you arrived here,” Halbarad commented softly, thinking this to be the end of their story.

“Not quite yet,” the younger Adan responded.

Estel twisted in his seat to observe Legolas. Truth be told, he wished the Elf would do as he had been about to do a moment ago – that is, to come to stand behind the Adan, to lay his hands upon him; or better yet, Aragorn wished they were curled up under a bedroll on the soft-looking bags of wheat flour nearby. It was becoming increasingly harder to hide his incessant shivering and he longed to be encased in the Wood-Elf’s warm embrace.

Having taken over the relation of their tale, Legolas went on, saying, “It had become night, and in following the creek to find the village, we came upon vultures eating a young girl’s corpse – it was the very same girl who I saw… or the body of the spirit, I mean. At that moment, when we were inspecting her remains, the haunt came to us again, having snuck up behind us. I turned to speak to Estel and saw that she had her arms out, as if to grab Estel, though I yanked him from the way ere she could touch him and stood in his place.”

The Wood-Elf shifted uncomfortably where he stood, adjusted the straps to his quiver, and then continued his agitated pacing from the hearth, to the table, and then back again. Suddenly, the Wood-Elf stopped in midstride, walked swiftly the few steps to the table where the two Rangers sat, and looked defiantly at Halbarad, as though daring the elder human to disbelieve him when he said, “We stood there for a short while, her hands reaching out for me, with neither Estel nor I moving so not to incite her into action. It was then that she showed me something. My eyes closed as if they were not my own, and when they opened, I saw an elderly man standing beside a barn – but I saw it _as if I were her_ ,” the Elf stressed to Halbarad. “In this lucid dream, the man picked her up and swung her about playfully. When I opened my eyes again, I saw the haunt for what she truly is: a child, alone, bereft, and confused, seeking comfort. So, this time, when she reached out for me, without thinking of it, I reached out for her. Luckily, Aragorn pulled me away from her, causing us both to fall to the ground. When we rose from where we had fallen, the haunt was gone yet again. I have not felt her presence or seen her since.”

Legolas must have thought Halbarad might question the validity of this part of their story more than any other part; however, the Prince was proven wrong, for the elder Ranger was absorbing every word the Elf said, his confusion growing but his strangely fervent gaze fixed upon Legolas, who was clearly becoming distressed by it. Halbarad opened his mouth, his whiskered jaw and wind chapped lips moving to form a question or comment, but he said nothing in the end. He then hunched forward as if to stand, but remained seated and soon sat back into his undersized chair. With both hands, Halbarad made a whispery sound as he rubbed at the silver stubble over his cheeks, chin, and neck. And all the while he did these things, the elder man never once stopped staring at the laegel.

To try to remove Halbarad’s focus from Legolas, Aragorn took over, saying in conclusion, “We decided to take her body to the nearest farm, to hand her over to someone who could find her people for a proper burial. As it turned out, the very farm we found first was the one she showed to Legolas. Whatever killed her, she did not die far from home, it seems. The people there had been dead for weeks, I think, including the older man who swung the girl around and made her laugh. After investigating and finding everyone on the farm dead, we left her body in the house for safekeeping and decided to continue on to the village. Shortly thereafter, we encountered Jakob on the road.”

They sat in silence, each of them processing the complexities of their shared information. Outside the schoolhouse, the children still shouted and laughed in the village green, the sounds of hammers hitting metal, of axes hitting wood, and of people gossiping and arguing were as loud as before, though amongst those villagers, Aragorn thought he could hear Jakob’s laughter and boisterous voice. Still, Halbarad stared at Legolas, just as had the two villagers done while Estel and Legolas walked with them and Jakob to the settlement, though Halbarad gawked for an entirely different reason than mere curiosity. It took Estel a few moments before he realized what avid emotion graced the elder man’s face – it was reverent hope.

His stomach moiling, Aragorn knew, _Sweet Eru. Halbarad thinks Greenleaf can save this village and all these people._

Certainly, as it turned out, Estel and Legolas had more leads than did Halbarad and Jakob, but they were as ephemeral as the specter herself. In seeing Halbarad’s fervency, the Ranger resolved that he would not let his Elven lover become the proverbial sacrificial lamb, relegated the responsibility of forfeiting his life to save these people, nor did he want the whole village to know of Legolas’ ability to see the specter. The people here might be good and gentlefolk, but in their fear and self-preservation, they would guilt the Silvan into accepting the role of savior in this travesty, which Legolas would do gladly for their sakes. Once he found out Aragorn was likely ill by the haunt’s wintry touch, Legolas would do whatever it took to end this with no regard for his own life or safety. However, if something foul happened, if more people died or their favorable opinion of the Rangers shifted, the villagers might turn upon Legolas, perchance seeing the Silvan as the harbinger of their troubles. Aragorn had brought the Wood-Elf with him for their mutual enjoyment of each other’s company – not to die. He would not allow it.

“It must be her. This haunt you’ve seen. It must be her.” The elder Ranger stood rapidly, the small chair screeched as it slid across the plank floor, and his knees hit the table, which knocked over one of the tumblers and sloshed the water from the pitcher, though Halbarad paid none of this any mind. Estel, however, grabbed the rolling cup to keep it from shattering upon the floor. To Legolas, Halbarad declared feverishly, “You said she seemed to pull the life from the forest around her, right? She is pulling the life from these villagers. And they cannot see her, she leaves no trace of her presence… it explains almost everything. It must be her.”

Legolas looked to Estel, his diffidence about this conclusion clear to Estel, though to Halbarad the Elf looked no different, so minor was the difference in the set of the Elda’s features. Like Legolas, Aragorn was not as assured as Halbarad was that this was true. Shaking his fair head, the Elf countered, “You say these deaths occur only at night. If the cause of their deaths is confined to the darkness, then I ought not to have been able to see her in the daylight, as I did the first time,” the Prince fumblingly reasoned, speaking aloud what he had yet to think through completely.

“If it is not her, then I can see no other explanation. Besides, she didn’t kill you or Aragorn,” Halbarad argued mildly, walking so that he stood right in front of the Elf. The Prince and elder Ranger were conversing almost to themselves, leaving Aragorn out of it, though without ill intent, as Halbarad was entirely fixated upon Legolas being the one who might save them. “When you saw her during the day, you said she did not move. But, when you saw her during the night, she reached for Aragorn and then you. Mayhap she was incapable of trying to kill you two during the day. Mayhap that is why there have only been deaths at night. You are the only person able to see her, so who knows if she is around the village even now, unable to do as she does during the night, consuming the very life from the poor, unsuspecting souls who encounter her.”

While Halbarad and Legolas’ attention was for each other, Estel rubbed at his thighs, which were covered in gooseflesh from the chills wracking his sturdy frame. _That is entirely possible,_ Aragorn considered of Halbarad’s dispute, but he was still reluctant to pin the foul deeds upon the Adan girl’s haunt. There was little Legolas or Estel could argue against Halbarad’s sound reasoning; in fact, given that Aragorn thought the girl’s specter had touched him as she might have the others, thereby causing his chilled and numbed flesh – all of which had happened to him at night – his only question was this: _But why am I still alive? Did she somehow spare me or did Greenleaf pull me away just soon enough to keep my death from being instant, making it slow and freezing, instead?_

Aragorn was drawn from his deliberation when Halbarad said the very thing Estel feared the most, telling the Silvan, “You are our best chance to end this. You can save these people’s lives, Prince Legolas.”

From where he sat twisted in his chair to view his fellow Ranger and the Elf, Aragorn could barely see Legolas’ face over Halbarad’s shoulder, but he could feel as his lover was overwhelmed by this declaration. He interrupted before his Halbarad could further beleaguer the fraught Silvan, “Halbarad, if this girl’s haunt is the cause of the deaths in this village, then Legolas’ ability to see her is of little use. Legolas drew his sword upon her by instinct when she was near, while at the creek side. She was not harmed by it. No weapon can end her.”

“But Lord Elrond will send advice, don’t you think? He will tell us what do to,” the elder human argued, not bothering to look at Estel as he contended this, and his optimism not lessened at all with his Chieftain’s admonishment. Aragorn watched in aggravation as Halbarad placed a hand upon the Elf’s shoulder and smiled cordially, eagerly at Legolas, his petition said with clear anticipation that the valiant Wood-Elf would not deny him, “If Lord Elrond knows what is happening or how to end it, you will be the one to do it. You will help us in saving these people, won’t you?”

He closed his eyes in horrified expectation of the Wood-Elf’s answer – an answer that would not surprise Estel in the least, for how could Legolas say no to such a humble request? Yes, the Prince had earlier that day claimed to want to leave the village and its problems behind, all as a means of keeping Aragorn safe. However, after walking through the settlement on their way to the schoolhouse to meet with Halbarad, after seeing for himself the hardworking women, embattled men, and joyously innocent children who would likely die without his and Aragorn’s aid, Edain who looked to Legolas with suppliant enthusiasm because they thought Legolas being an Elf would enable him to succeed where their own efforts had failed – well, there was no chance Legolas would deny this unprovoked obligation that Halbarad wished to place upon the laegel’s shoulders. For Legolas to say no would be counter to everything the Ranger knew of the brave and selfless Silvan.

And so, it was with no shock on Estel’s behalf and no dithering on Legolas’ part that the Elf replied immediately, “Of course, I will.”

Aragorn stood from the small chair and stumbled as the numbness from his back threw off his balance. At once, the worried Silvan Prince was beside him, one long fingered hand upon Estel’s upper arm to steady him. He could see the question in the Elf’s face, a question that for some reason Legolas refrained from asking him now, despite having asked him repeatedly this day – that is, if Estel were well. It was time to tell them what he wanted most to keep secret. They stared at him in expectancy of his arguing against the task appointed the Elf.

_I do not look forward to this at all._

Estel sighed heavily – only through sheer will did he keep his teeth from chattering as he did so. Both Legolas and Halbarad were staring at him with mounting concern, for they could see the shivering that he was no longer able to hide and noted how he wavered on his feet from exhaustion. “I don’t know if the girl’s haunt is responsible, but one thing is certain: her touch does cause ill effects to those with whom she comes into contact.” Giving the Silvan a remorseful smile, Aragorn admitted to his fellow Ranger and his Elven lover, “And if I am any proof of this, then we shall see what happens from it, as I think she managed to touch me last night, try though Legolas did to pull me from her before it happened.”

The hand upon his arm grew bruisingly tight, making Aragorn wince. He immediately felt the need to apologize, but Halbarad’s presence kept Aragorn from begging his lover’s forgiveness for hiding this illness from him. Legolas only stood staring at Estel, a range of emotions flitting across his unusually expressive face. First, anger turned the laegel’s cerulean eyes a violent, sharp shade of icy blue, which made Legolas look entirely too much like Thranduil appeared when angered. Worry, fear, and then a second wave of ire kept the Wood-Elf silent, it seemed, such that Aragorn forgot about Halbarad’s presence, lifted his hand to take the Prince’s unoccupied limb, and slid his fingers between the Silvan’s lax own. Finally, there was only one emotion written upon the Elda’s typically kind and beautiful visage; of all that he had anticipated from Legolas, Aragorn had not been prepared for how Legolas gazed at him with utter betrayal blanching his already pale features.

 _I am sorry,_ he said to himself, wishing for a moment alone to assuage Legolas’ worry in private, to apologize for being hypocritical in hiding his suspicions of having been tainted by the haunt, when over the last few months the human repeatedly had reproved the Wood-Elf for hiding the effects of his grief upon his rhaw and faer.

It was Halbarad who first broke the pregnant silence and questioned Estel. The elder man came to stand before his younger Chieftain to ask, “She touched you, Aragorn? You are certain of it? You cannot see her, by your own admission. How do you know she has done it?”

“Certain? No.” He grudgingly released Legolas’ hand and then tugged at the Silvan’s hold of his arm, but the laegel did not loosen his grasp, did not even seem aware that he was clutching onto the human’s arm, and did not notice how Estel tried to break free of the excruciating impediment. “At the time, I thought it was only my imagination… that I was reacting to having learnt from Legolas that the haunt almost touched me. I thought perhaps, even, that I was only getting sick and would soon be feverish. I hoped these symptoms would disappear or other symptoms commence to offer proof that it is merely human sickness, but they have only grown worse, I have no fever, no cough, and no aches and pains to make me think I will be ill in any ordinary way. So, no, I am not certain,” he repeated, “and I could be wrong, but I think she is the cause.”

Outside, in the relatively balmy autumn day, in the sunshine amongst friends and family, a child screamed to a friend in the hellishly shrill way of which only a child is capable. The windows of the schoolhouse were boarded up by shutters; in remote parts such as this village, glass windows were rare, and Aragorn had not seen a single pane of glass on their walk to the schoolhouse. Even if the shutters were not snug, though they appeared to be, the air outside was not algid as would it normally be this time of year, there was a fire roaring nearby, and Estel was fully clothed and even wearing his cloak. Despite that there was no natural cause for him to be cold and there were several reasons why he should instead be warm, it was the Elf’s hand by which heat steadily seeped back into the Adan’s body. Although he had tried to break free of Legolas’ painful hold moments ago, when he realized that his shuddering body was calming, Estel no longer wanted to pull free because the laegel’s bruising grip offered the only warmth he had felt since he and Legolas had been on the farm and he had held the laegel in his arms.

Again, it was his fellow Ranger who questioned him. Halbarad looked between the silently belligerent Wood-Elf and his Chieftain, wondering about the strange nuance to the two beings’ demeanors, ere he queried worriedly, “What symptoms?”

While Legolas only stood there with his scorchingly shrewd attention upon Aragorn, who still could not bring himself to return the Elf’s ferocious gaze, the younger Ranger answered, “Cold. Numbness. It started from several spots upon my skin but it has progressively grown and spread since that moment, until now it covers the whole of my lower back.”

Halbarad looked to Legolas for guidance but was ignored; so instead, he asked of Aragorn, “Let us see. Possibly, there is a benign explanation. Spider bites, rashes, and the like can cause similar symptoms, as you well know,” the elder man offered, giving Estel and the unnoticing Elf a smile of hope that looked out of place upon the typically morose elder man.

Finally, to allow Estel to shift his tunic, Legolas removed his hand from Aragorn’s bicep and agreed in a murmur, “Yes, Estel. Let us see it.”

Glad to be free of facing the Silvan’s wrathful and betrayed visage, Aragorn turned around, swept his cloak over one shoulder so it hung entirely down the front of his chest, and lifted his tunic and undershirt as far as he could without removing his quiver, and thus exposed his deadened flesh to them. Being that he could not see his own lower back, Aragorn had no idea what they might find. For all he knew, the skin of his back might be blackened and sloughing off, as would the skin of someone who had suffered severe frostbite. Since he could not feel it, it did not hurt, and so he thought it might also be inflamed and chafed from his constant abrading of it.

After a short while of their inspection, Halbarad concluded, “Looks a little irritated, as if you’ve been rubbing it, but otherwise, I see nothing unusual at all.”

With his back to them, Estel could not see what the two were doing so could only assume from what Legolas next said that he had stopped the older Ranger from reaching out to touch Aragorn, for the Elf cautioned Halbarad harshly, “Do not touch him.” The Elf’s demand sounded possessive and vindictive to Aragorn, but soon Legolas explained his reasoning, warning the elder man, “It may spread like a human illness. We do not know.”

And yet, seconds later, Aragorn felt pressure upon the muscles of lower back, though he could not exactly feel the fingers upon his skin. It was unnerving; again, he wondered if this was how Legolas had felt when touching the marred flesh of his thigh back when his sorrow inhabited it. Even without seeing whose hand was upon him or truly being able to feel the contact except by the pressure of it, Estel knew his lover was the one who touched him.

Careful not to sound as if he were chastising the Elf, Halbarad was still concerned that their only means of seeing the haunt might now be imperiling his own life, and so suggested, “I know you are not susceptible to human sickness, Legolas, but you take risk in touching him, as well. If it is truly the specter that has caused this, then it likely isn’t confined to affecting only the Secondborn.”

“I do not care,” the Prince replied mordantly. The simple statement must have confused Halbarad but Aragorn understood what Legolas was not saying; that is, that should Estel die, Legolas would die anyway, so it was best that only he become tainted, if possible. “Besides, I have already been in contact with him,” the Wood-Elf mumbled, adding to the Adan to whom his faer was tied, “Your skin feels warm to me, Estel, not cold. Is there no explanation for this other than the girl’s spirit?”

Aragorn closed his eyes and focused upon the meager sensation of his lover’s hand upon his flesh. For some reason he couldn’t understand, the fear of his likely, imminent death from this malady was less frightening than the thought that the numbness would extend further over his body, eventually anesthetizing his whole being, which would make him incapable of ever feeling Legolas’ touch again. “If there is another explanation, I cannot think of it. My back felt strange just moments after you said that you saw her, Greenleaf. I truly thought it was just my imagination,” he desperately explained, for he wanted the Silvan to know that he had not hidden this from the start, even though he knew it would matter little to Legolas to learn it.

Unbeknownst to Estel, being that he had  yet to lower his shirt and turn back around to face his fellow Ranger and the Elf, Halbarad and Legolas were watching as Aragorn’s stance became shaky, while outright shudders of discomforting frigidity wracked his body. And yet, with Legolas’ hand still palpating the flesh of his lower back, even that small amount of contact was warming Estel enough that he did not wish for Legolas to stop.

Halbarad made a disturbed grunt that resonated deep and low in his chest, which was the only sign of worry for Aragorn’s welfare that Aragorn was bound to garner from the gruff older man. The seasoned Ranger wondered to Legolas and Aragorn, “If it is the girl’s doing, then it doesn’t match how the villagers have died, does it?”

A short and furious rap upon the door interrupted their conversation and their deliberation over the discrepancy Halbarad mentioned would have to wait; to Estel’s regret, it also caused Legolas to withdraw his touch. Without waiting for invitation, Jakob entered the room in a flustered huff of preoccupation. If the young Ranger found it odd how the Silvan Prince and Halbarad were gathered behind his Chieftain, inspecting Aragorn’s back, he said nothing of it, but told them, “Halbarad, you’d best come out here. Some of the menfolk want to know what to do. They think Aragorn and Legolas have brought answers and are looking for work to see it done. They aren’t riled up yet but they are getting there quickly.”

Adjusting his clothing to cover himself, Estel turned back to the elder Ranger and the laegel, both of whom were looking at him with unhidden concern. Halbarad nodded absently to Jakob but spoke to Estel and Legolas. “There is food about, water and wine. Help yourself to something. Behind those bookcases,” he offered, “there lies a cot. Go rest, Aragorn. I will diffuse the villagers’ unrest for now and we will need you bright eyed and rested at nightfall – and you, as well, Legolas. Most especially you.”

Having hoped to be able to turn over his responsibility to his Chieftain, Halbarad now found himself fully ensconced in the role of leader, being that it was uncertain to Halbarad if Aragorn would survive to be of any true aid. Estel could see this encumbrance upon the elder man’s shoulders, weighing them down as he walked to Jakob. The moment that Halbarad left the schoolhouse with Jakob and the door was shut upon Estel and Legolas, leaving them alone for the first time in hours, the Adan tried to apologize, beginning, “Greenleaf, I’m – ”

He got no further before he was enveloped in the Wood-Elf’s embrace. “Why did you not tell me? Why hide it, meleth nin?”

No matter the temperature of the air, the Elf seemed to radiate heat, and Legolas warmed Estel by his mere nearness. Gratefully, he returned the hug by pressing his body tightly to the Silvan’s leaner form. He said now what he had tried to tell Legolas only moments ago. “I wanted only to be certain before I told you. I truly thought it was only my imagination or some sickness at first. And then, I thought perhaps taking her body to her people might appease her spirit and thus this illness… or whatever it is. After that, I did not wish to say anything in front of the villagers,” he rambled somewhat, knowing his excuses were paltry but believing his actions were well intentioned. “I only wanted to be sure before I told you so you wouldn’t worry over me.”

He had thought himself pushed as tightly to the Elf as he could get, but with a firm squeeze of his strong arms, Legolas drew the man even closer. “I’m sorry, Estel. I thought I was quick enough to pull you away before she touched you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It is not your fault,” he rejoindered, planting his face firmly in the warm crook of the Prince’s neck. He inhaled deeply, as he always did instinctually when this close to the Elf, for he always craved Legolas’ scent.

They stood together for a short while in silence. For Aragorn, his mind was as relieved as was his body by his admission, for he hated to keep secrets from Legolas and it wore down his spirit to do so, while his body was relieved not to have to fight the shivers he had been trying to quell the whole day. In the Elf’s arms, though, he did not shiver, at least, and since Legolas was not angry with him, the Adan could relax and enjoy the Prince’s embrace.

Without releasing the Ranger, Legolas told Estel, “Halbarad is right. Even if the girl is not the one who has done this, she is some part of it. If something similar is causing the deaths of the villagers, then perhaps I will be able to see it, as well. And if I can, then I can try to stop it. I will do whatever is necessary to save these people – and you, Estel. You know that I will do whatever is needed to save you.”

“Greenleaf,” he whispered pleadingly, though he was unsure of what he wanted to ask of the Elf; however, he was certain he did not want Legolas to die for him. And yet, what the Elf might accomplish could save the lives of the villagers, so Aragorn merely pressed a kiss to the tender skin just under the Silvan’s jaw and did not give voice to his desire for Legolas to abandon his promise. Instead, he only asked of the Prince, “Just be careful, Greenleaf. Whatever happens, promise me you will be careful.”

“I will. I need to, don’t I? If I am the only one who can see these threats, then if whatever we try to do to stop them doesn’t work, I will need to be alive to try again, and again, if need be, until I know you are safe.” Attempting to infuse a bit of humor into their melancholy circumstances, Legolas intoned in his falsely pretentious, princely voice, “You are not allowed to die, Estel. Do not even consider it. I forbid it.”

He sniggered against the side of the laegel’s neck and closed his eyes. For a while longer, they remained pressed together, finding comfort in the other’s nearness, in the other’s warmth, and in the profound love and affection that they felt for each other.

The Wood-Elf warned him quietly, “Halbarad and Jakob are returning.”

He was not ashamed of his love for Legolas but now was not the time to make it known to all. By Estel’s thinking, if the villagers or his fellow Rangers learnt of his bond with the Prince, it would only cause them to scrutinize Legolas further, and Legolas needed no more unwanted attention from the humans. Reluctantly, the Adan pulled away just before Halbarad and Jakob entered the one-room schoolhouse.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Despite that Legolas and Aragorn now stood apart, Halbarad looked chagrined as he entered, as if aware that he had interrupted something personal between his Chieftain and the Elven Prince. “I think the villagers are appeased for now. I told them that we had new information and a plan, and that tonight we would try to find the culprit behind the events occurring here, although I warned them that this did not mean all would be well tomorrow.”

“You look as if you will fall over, Aragorn,” Jakob teased, unintentionally interrupting his Chieftain before Estel could ask about Halbarad’s statement, for they had made no plan that either he or Legolas knew of.

“He is on his way to rest right now,” Legolas replied firmly, sounding very much as if he would argue should Estel try to procrastinate resting, try though he did not to sound like a mother hen. He smiled forcedly at the Rangers around him, picked up his and Aragorn’s bags where they had dropped them on the floor near the table upon their entrance into the school, and then asked Halbarad, “There is a cot behind the bookcases, you say?”

Halbarad nodded and led the way, with Legolas gesturing for Aragorn to follow in behind Halbarad so that he could ensure the man would go. The back wall of the room was lined with sturdy bookcases, all of which had closed backs and nearly reached the ceiling, but the bookcases stood away from the wall several feet, such that upon walking through the gap in the bookcases at the far end of them, one entered a secretive, small room. _This reminds me of the Imladrian library,_ Legolas mused as he followed Aragorn within the cozy ensconcement. Much of the library in Rivendell was fashioned similarly, with bookcases as walls partitioning off sections of the massive room. As Halbarad had promised, there was a single cot behind these bookcases, along with a small desk and chair, and a trunk with its lid open, the contents of which were myriad, frayed, yellowed rolls of parchment.

Halbarad stepped from the way to allow Legolas and Estel to pass, saying, “I will keep anyone from coming inside the school, except for myself and Jakob, so you can rest uninterrupted for a while. As I said, if you hunger, there is food about out in the main room. Help yourself.”

“Thank you,” Estel told his fellow Ranger and then plopped down onto the thin down mattress over the cot.

He sat his and Aragorn’s bags upon the table and began untying their bedrolls, all of which he would wrap around Estel to try to keep him warm. When his hands shook, Legolas maneuvered slightly to stand in front of the desk so that Aragorn would not see how he fumbled to release the knots holding the blankets to their bags. _This cannot be happening,_ he fretted, taking in a carefully noiseless, deep breath to calm his racing mind. _I will not let him die._

“At least this bed is softer than the ground, though not by much,” the Adan joked but received no teasing remark in return, for Legolas was too lost in his thoughts even to notice that Estel had spoken. After finally removing the three blankets tied to Aragorn’s satchel, he removed the single blanket from his own, and by then, Estel had come to realize that the Prince was lost in anxiety, for the man stood and walked up behind the Elf. Sliding his hands around the Silvan’s waist, Aragorn laid his forehead upon the Prince’s shoulder blade, just beside his quiver. “Calm down, Greenleaf,” he whispered nearly inaudibly, knowing that Legolas could hear him while hoping that Jakob and Halbarad would not. “Ada is sending aid, I know it. If I know my brothers, they will be here soon with knowledge from Ada. You know the twins can’t help but seek out trouble and won’t pass up this opportunity. We will do what we can for these people, but none of this was our fault nor is it our responsibility, except as much as we accept.”

Placing his hands over the human’s hands, Legolas gently pried them away from his navel, turned around, and hastily pressed a chaste kiss upon the man’s chin. Shamefully, Legolas admitted what the man already knew, saying just as quietly, “I was willing to walk away from this village and its people to keep you safe, but after seeing them, I wanted to help. Now that your fate is entwined with their fate, nothing will stop me, Estel. Even if the twins do not come or Minyatar send aid, I will find some way to stop this.”

Gently, he pushed the human away and to the bed, where Aragorn dropped back down into sitting. “I don’t blame you for wanting to keep me safe, Greenleaf, because I feel the same for you. I almost wish that we had taken a different route and never saw the haunt, or that we had never heard of these peoples’ problems. I wish we were back at the lake, lying under the oak tree, and throwing acorns at each other.”

“But then the twins would have come here to help and been without our help,” the Silvan countered as he stepped closer to Aragorn. Again, the human wound his arms loosely around the Elf’s hips, though now that he sat and Legolas stood, Estel pressed his face against the Prince’s belly while familiarly cupping the Wood-Elf’s arse – which he did with a pleased sigh of contentment. “It is good that we are here to help, so we can help Elladan and Elrohir, or whoever comes, as well.”

“Yes, you are right. Jakob and Halbarad both said that Eru guided us here. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps we were meant to come here, to be of service to this village. If so, I hope we are able to help them, to save them,” the Ranger replied, his voice muffled by how he had his mouth pressed to the tunic covering the Elf’s belly.

Legolas could sense that Aragorn sought his warmth as much as the human sought the comfort of touching the Elf. Had they been anywhere else, Legolas would have merely laid in bed with the Adan, but given that he did not want to give away the bond between himself and Aragorn, Legolas decided he would sit in the chair for a while and watch the human sleep. But first, he would do what he could to ensure that the Adan stayed warm. And so, first, Legolas dropped to his knees before Aragorn and reached for the buckle at the Ranger’s waist, which he deftly unfastened to remove Estel’s belt and thus the broadsword strapped to the man’s body. Next, he did the same for Aragorn’s quiver and bow. Through all of this, Estel watched Legolas with a sleepy grin; despite his worry and his fear, the Elf found himself smiling right back at Aragorn.

 _I will keep him alive. I will not let him die,_ he thought, and then, as if by repeating this mantra he might make it come true, the Elf thought again, _I will keep him alive. Estel will not die._

There were no windows in this part of the schoolhouse and no light except that which streamed in from the gap between the tops of the bookcases and the vaulted ceiling, so the hideaway room was dark, cozy, and relatively quiet. With Legolas’ insistent help, the Ranger laid back upon the thin mattress. The Prince then spread each and every blanket they had, including the two that had already been upon the bed, over the Adan, such that Estel was no more than a vague lump – save for his head sticking out at the top. When done, however, Aragorn looked to Legolas with a disgruntled moue of disappointment, ere he held his hands out in invitation.

“Are you not joining me?” the Adan asked, holding the blankets up so that the Elf could slide inside his cocoon of covers.

 _That is unfair,_ he decided with a loving smile, but gave in and nodded to the Ranger. _I suppose he will stay warmer this way._

Legolas could not tell Estel no; in fact, he had rarely been capable of saying no to the Adan, even when Aragorn was younger and apt to request Legolas to find him honeyed cakes in the middle of the night or to help him prank the twins when the Prince knew that Elladan and Elrohir’s retaliatory pranks would be much more vicious. He made quick work in removing his own weapons and laid them on the table beside the human’s weapons, and then climbed behind Aragorn onto the small cot, such that he could put his back to the cold plank wall. Although made for a single person, the two lovers curled up as if one, with Legolas wrapping his arms around Estel and his legs bowed behind the human’s slightly longer limbs.

It took only a few minutes for the man’s shivering to cease, his restless movements to end, and his breathing to deepen. Lying wide awake behind the human, Legolas knew the moment that Aragorn fell into slumber, for the man’s typically tense body melded meltingly into the Elf’s form. Legolas tried to close his eyes, to rest, to find some respite from his anxiety and fear, but each little noise in the room beyond wrenched his eyes open, every small movement from Aragorn incited the Elf’s fear for the man, and his mind would not quit its worrisome pondering. How long he lay there, Legolas could not tell, but after what he guessed to be an hour, Halbarad snuck into the ensconcement to check on them. Seeing that Legolas was awake, the elder Ranger did not turn back and leave as he had intended to do, but quietly walked farther within the room until he stood at the desk just by the head of the bed.

Aware of the too familiar way in which he and Aragorn were huddled together, Legolas wondered what Halbarad would say of it, but to his relief, Halbarad did not seem embarrassed to find his Chieftain being embraced in the Prince’s arms. Nonetheless, the elder human commented, “It seems Aragorn has finally stopped shivering. It also seems that he finally told you about his love for you, and you did not spurn him as he must have feared.”

Taken aback by this, Legolas wondered to himself, _Estel told me that he wasn’t even aware he was in love with me until he almost lost me, after what happened near Lake-town with the merchants. How did Halbarad know?_

Halbarad saw the Elf’s confused frown and seemed to read Legolas’ mind, for he replied as if he heard the Prince’s question to himself, “He never said a word about being in love with you but I could always tell. The way he talked about you, the way he was always so eager to hear of your coming to the valley or for his going to Mirkwood, or like today, seeing the way he looks at you, the way he hangs upon your every word – it was likely obvious to everyone but him that he was in love with you. I’m glad he finally realized it.”

“It was not obvious to me,” the Elf confessed, “nor was I aware that what I felt for him was more than the love of a brother, not until…” Legolas trailed off in his explanation, for he did not want to tell Halbarad under what circumstances he and Aragorn had professed their love, nor was he even sure why he was so willing to talk to the man about it. Under the blanket, Legolas laxly stroked Aragorn’s forearm, around which his hand was enfolded. Not wanting to lie to Halbarad and as he did not see the judgment he had feared upon the elder Adan’s face, he admitted, “Yes, he did realize it and told me of it. And no, I did not spurn him.”

“Good. Aragorn deserves to be happy. It is a hard and meager life, being a Ranger. We often take comfort and happiness where we can find it, which is not often and not for long.” Leaning against the side of the small desk, Halbarad looked back to the gap between the bookcases, through which coruscations from the fire’s flames licked along the corner where the two walls of the schoolhouse met in an uneven, coarsely mudded angle. “The villagers are good people, but let us not tempt fate and give them any cause to turn against us, shall we? They don’t need to know. As you likely already realize, the Edain are sometimes less willing to accept that which they don’t understand, and love between males is something most Edain don’t understand.”

So exhausted was the Ranger that Estel did not so much as twitch during Legolas and Halbarad’s conversation. The Prince moved as little as possible so that he would not rouse the Adan, as he wanted for Estel to sleep for as long as he could. Still, Legolas wished that Aragorn were awake for this conversation, though, as it concerned him and Halbarad was his friend, not Legolas’ friend. He nodded at Halbarad, agreeing, “It is of no concern to them. Thank you.”

The elder man stood there, gazing down at Estel for a while in a fatherly, apprehensive way, until he told the Elf, “Jakob and I think we might have a feasible plan for how to find this haunt you spoke of. For Aragorn’s sake and for this village’s sake, I hope Lord Elrond sends aid. Even if we discern that it is indeed the haunt of the girl you saw, we will need his advice on how to stop it.”

Although he wasn’t sure himself, he assured Halbarad, “Elrond will send aid. Elladan and Elrohir will likely come, as Estel earlier told me, and perhaps they will be capable of seeing the haunt as am I. Regardless, I vow I will do whatever it takes to eradicate her presence, which will hopefully end this affliction she has caused Estel, and make this village safe for its people.”

“I hope so, Legolas. I hope so.” With a heaving sigh, Halbarad stroked the whiskers on his neck and gave the Prince a pithy smile. “In the meanwhile, why don’t you try to sleep, as well, if you can. Like I said, I will see to it that no one comes within the schoolhouse, I promise.”

“Thank you,” Legolas told the elder Ranger again, but Halbarad had already pushed away from the desk and begun walking towards the gap between the bookcases. Legolas watched him go, closed his eyes, and laid his cheek atop Aragorn’s wavy haired head. With the guarantee that no one would enter and his mind at rest that Halbarad and Jakob were working on a strategy for tonight, the Wood-Elf finally allowed himself to relax enough to fall into reverie, and it was nearly nightfall before he awoke.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, _Dagor Dagoreth_ isn't technically canon anymore, I don't think, because Christoper Tolkien retracted it from his father's mythology about the creation and destruction of Arda. But I love the idea, so I used it here and have alluded to it in other parts of the series, though never by name. I think I've only referred to it as the "end of days" or talked about Eru's "second song." If you aren't familiar with Tolkien's creation mythology, then you are missing out on a beautifully spiritual aspect to the Tolkien universe! The bitterest tragedy for me, as an Estel/Legolas shipper, is explained in this chapter. 
> 
> Secondly, due to the holidays, there will likely not be another chapter until after the New Year, unless I get the time to edit what I had intended to be the second half of the chapter I've just posted. So, no matter your religion or lack thereof, take care for the next couple of weeks, and as always, enjoy the chapter!

“Prince Legolas?”

While not affected by heat, as would be an Adan, the Silvan felt overly warm and because of that, Legolas awoke groggy and confused. He did not recognize who was saying his name; the unfamiliar bed in which he laid was situated strangely and unlike any that he had ever slept in before, as while normally the headboard would be against a wall, this cot’s headboard was towards the gap in between the bookcases, such that Legolas had to sit up to see who was speaking.

Again, Halbarad called softly, “Prince Legolas? I’m sorry to have to wake you, but it is nearing nightfall.”

He looked down to the human lying beside him. Estel was breathing deeply, one side of his face flushed from where Legolas’ cheek had been pressed against it, and his body was still, evincing that during the Elf’s time in reverie, Aragorn had not grown cold and thus had not recommenced his shivering. With as much grace as he could muster, given that his right arm was tingling from having lain upon it for so long while curled up behind Aragorn, Legolas rose from the thin mattress, hefted his upper half over the single slat that served as a headboard, and then slithered his way out from under the thick mound of blankets. In doing so, his sleeping arm gave way and he might have tumbled to the floor, had not Halbarad suddenly appeared to steady him.

The elder Ranger whispered again, as if he thought the Elf had not heard him before, “I’m sorry to have to wake you but it’s almost nightfall.”

Legolas thanked the man as he straightened his mussed clothing, and then said, “Give me a moment and I will come join you in the other room, Halbarad, please. I’d rather not wake Estel just now, since he is sleeping so soundly.”

With a split second smile, the grey and grizzled Ranger nodded and padded his way out of the ensconcement and into the main room beyond the bookcases. Unable to shake the befuddlement of his deep reverie, Legolas perched on the edge of the bed beside Estel, thinking to gather his rambling thoughts before he spoke again to Halbarad. Upon seeing that the blankets were shifted away from Aragorn’s shoulders, the Prince tucked the coverlets in around the man’s body, ensuring that the warm cocoon they had created with their shared heat would not be lost just yet.

_If it is almost nightfall, then it is almost time to see what can be done about the haunt – or at least, to see if she is in the village harassing these folk._ While it would soothe him to know what it was they faced, and thus give them a course of action for how to stop it, the Elf did not want for the innocent, bereaved child’s spirit to be the cause. It was an awful way for her to be remembered, as once the villagers learnt she was the menace behind this tumultuous interruption to their lives, they would soon forget the child she had been and forever brand her as a malevolent spirit.

Legolas swept wavy hair away from Estel’s forehead, his fingertips lingering over his lover’s dark brows, his finely made but very faintly crooked nose – a nearly imperceptible bent left after it was broken in battle years ago and the Ranger had been forced to set it himself, as he had been the only healer around – and his fingernails whispering through the scratchy, thickening beard upon Aragorn’s face. Unlike his own body, which was nearly devoid of hair save for that which grew upon his head, his brows, and the sparse patch around his shaft, Estel was covered in dark hair everywhere, some of it stippled grey. Legolas loved the coarse feel of Estel’s body hair when their bodies were aligned in sleep or in pleasure. He loved the sensation of his lover’s whiskered mouth and chin as they kissed or when Aragorn lathed and lapped his way over the Elf’s sensitive skin.

_Whatever happens tonight, at least he will be safe inside. This much I can be grateful for. If something happens to me and I do not live to see morning, the Imladrians – perhaps even the twins – will be here to see that Estel is cared for; hopefully, their coming will be within a few days, if Jakob’s estimation of the time it takes to travel straight from the valley to this village is at all accurate._

Reluctant to leave the human even to go into the other room, Legolas rose nonetheless, for his time was short ere Anor set, and he needed to learn of the plan that Halbarad and Jakob had concocted for nightfall. Quickly, the laegel once more straightened his clothing and smoothed down his hair, fixed a braid that had come loose, and then strode out of the ensconcement and into the main part of the schoolhouse, where Aragorn’s fellow Rangers were gathered around the only adult-sized table in the room. Legolas walked to the table, noting the items placed upon it. Two staves of green wood that were shorn of bark and wrapped in cloth at one end were resting upon a tin platter in which oil had been poured, such that the cloth was soaking up the oil. Two unlit, battered, but serviceable oil lanterns sat beside them, both fashioned into squares, with each side having a shutter that could be lifted to allow light to shine out or shut to prevent the light from escaping.

Still speaking quietly so as not to disturb Aragorn, Jakob smiled at Legolas as he told him, “I think we’ve figured out a way to keep us safe tonight for our hunting excursion.”

“Us?” the Elf asked the two Edain, wondering what all this was for and why Jakob implied he would be joining Legolas.

“You didn’t think I’d let you go hunting ghosts without me, did you?” the red-haired Ranger teased, his flippancy and enthusiasm out of place given their imminent task, though from what Legolas could gather, it seemed to be Jakob’s normal outlook towards life. “Besides, Aragorn would kill us if we let you go out alone. Someone needs to watch your back. And since Aragorn is ill and unable to go with you, I volunteered. The villagers seem to trust Halbarad, so it’s best not to risk losing him. An old man like Halbarad would only slow you down, anyway,” Jakob congenially taunted his elder, who only shook his head and snorted in response.

_Halbarad must have told Jakob everything,_ the Prince realized, and then promptly worried,  _but did he also tell Jakob about Estel and me? Is he volunteering for this because he wants to protect his Chieftain’s lover?_

Taking up one of the staves and rolling its clothed end in the oil to coat it thoroughly, Jakob continued, saying, "I know Estel considers you his closest friend outside his two foster brothers. It would kill him should you not return or should you be hurt. I respect Aragorn too much to let that happen," the fiery haired Ranger vehemently declared. "Besides, this is the business of the Rangers and you are doing us a great service tonight. It would be cowardly to sit in here where it is safe while you take all the risk."

From this explanation, Legolas drew the conclusion that Jakob had not been told of his and Estel's bond, though in the end, he supposed that it mattered little if Jakob knew. Glancing over the table, the Elf spotted how several items were oddly placed and spaced upon the tabletop, with a length of rope wound between them. He asked, pointing towards the rope and assortment of household items, "What is our plan? And what is this?"

“A map. Don’t worry. I’ll have it memorized,” Jakob assured the Elf with another of his infuriatingly cheerful smiles.

“And our plan, such as it is, is this: if it or they only kill at night, as we theorize, then perhaps they can be frightened away by light. So,” Halbarad offered hesitantly, aware as were Legolas and Jakob that their plan was based upon half-truths and guesses, presumptions and hope, “you and Jakob go out after dark, the lanterns lit but shuttered, such that you’re not scaring anything off, and take the route we’ve planned. If either of you so much as hear a rustle, open the shutter on the lantern. If something attacks, you’ll have the torches as weapons of sort.”

Halbarad checked the reservoir of oil under each lantern as he continued, “Some of the menfolk who came round earlier looking for work were given work – they’ve been busy setting up torches along the path they and Jakob deemed most likely to be safest. The torches along the path are oiled and only need to be lit. And Jakob, along with natural gossip, has ensured that everyone knows the both of you will be out tonight searching, so no one will get frightened and attack thinking either of you are the force behind the deaths. But also, we’ve made sure every house along the path you two are walking has at least one armed and healthy man who can come out to fight, should there be need, and… well…should there be a foe that can even be fought with weapons, that is.”

He reminded himself though he did not say it aloud, _But the girl’s haunt was not frightened or driven away by light – not the first time I saw her. If she is the cause, then we will be easy prey._

Their plan was a weak one. They truly had nothing else to go by or any other ideas, however, and Legolas was desperate to be of aid to Estel, so he did not argue. Instead, he nodded and told the two Rangers, “I think it might work. However,” he warned, speaking to Jakob and assuming since Jakob had been part of the planning that Halbarad had told his younger Ranger of how Legolas was able to sense and see what the humans could not, “I cannot guarantee your safety. I do not feel the girl’s presence now, but I don’t know that this means she is not here. Nor can I even guess if I could sense or see another haunt, should there be more. If you walk blindly into this thinking I can be your eyes to see danger’s coming, then you are mistaken, Master Human.”

For the first time, Jakob appeared something other than amused. A flash of umbrage crossed the man’s face ere he tugged at one braid of his beard and smirked widely, wildly, saying, “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve leapt before looking, as the saying goes.” Sobering his amusement, Jakob began rolling the second torch’s clothed end in the oil as he had the first, though he paused to affirm to Legolas, “I took an oath to protect the people of Eriador, same as Aragorn, same as Halbarad, and if I die tonight doing so, then I will die with honor. And as I said, if Aragorn wakes up to find that we let you go alone out there, he’d slaughter me anyway. I’ll take my chances with the ghost,” the younger Ranger finished, Jakob’s indomitable cheerfulness breaking through his solemnity once again and causing him to laugh loudly at his own jest, though an elbow to the rib from Halbarad quieted him.

The man’s death would be honorable, should it come to pass, but Legolas would rather Jakob live than risk his life in this fool’s errand. He would not say this to Jakob, though, for in truth, the Elf would be glad of the company and he did not want to seem ungrateful, nor did he want to denigrate the man’s contribution by acting as if Jakob’s presence were not worthy. So instead, Legolas returned Jakob’s smile and alluded, “You might be right of that, though if I were on my own, Estel would likely come running after me, and still might, once he learns we have left him behind.”

“Speaking of whom.” Normally, Halbarad might not even query for Legolas’ opinion on the matter, but since the elder human had only just learnt that day that the Prince and his Chieftain were lovers, Halbarad deferred to the Wood-Elf in asking, “Do you think we should wake Aragorn to tell him what we’ve planned?”

He shifted uncomfortably where he stood, for he was not accustomed to making decisions for Aragorn on Aragorn’s behalf, nor would he appreciate it if Aragorn did it for him. However, Legolas did not need to ponder the answer to this, since he had not been joking when he told the two Rangers before him that Estel would be hard to convince not to tag along once he knew Legolas was to be out patrolling in the dark. Feeling guilty but hiding it from Halbarad and Jakob, the Elf demanded, “No. Let him sleep for as long as possible. He is too sick to be of help and needs the rest. If he wakes on his own, fine, but otherwise, we’d only be waking him to sit in worry until Jakob and I return.”

Both Jakob and Halbarad nodded their assent, neither of them questioning Legolas’ right to make this decision for Estel, which was strange in and of itself and had the Prince wondering yet again if Jakob had any inkling of his and Estel’s bond, or if he was merely agreeable because Halbarad had agreed to Legolas’ demand. _It doesn’t matter, I suppose. As long as Estel is inside and safe, then I can focus upon finding out how to cure the malady the haunt caused him._ _Estel needs rest, warmth, and food – not worry and chilly night air,_ he tried to reason to himself, though as he thought of eating, he was reminded how long Estel had gone without doing so.

"It has been since this morning that Estel has eaten, and then it was only a bit of venison jerky," he told Halbarad, who was finally satisfied at the state of their lanterns and torches, and now took to studying the path along with Jakob. Legolas asked of the elder Ranger, "Can you please ensure that Estel eats something when he wakes?”

The cork from a wine bottle sat amongst the odd map the two had created of the village, signifying some building or landmark; Halbarad distractedly straightened the cork, reminding Legolas, "You know he won't be pleased with us for not waking him before you two leave, so will be even less agreeable than normal, but I can try. You know how stubborn Aragorn can be," Halbarad replied with a wry but fond smile for his Chieftain. During Estel’s formative years, when first he had taken his oath to be a Ranger, Halbarad had been his mentor, and the man still sometimes thought of Aragorn as if he were a son, even though he respected him greatly now as his leader. Halbarad looked up sharply to Legolas, realizing that he might have offended the Elf by questioning his decision on whether to wake Aragorn or not, and so quickly backpedaled, “You’re right, though, in keeping him here, since he truly is too sick to be out in this cold wind. At least if he doesn’t know beforehand that you two are gone, we won’t have to fight him to keep him inside with the women and children."

"And the old folks," Jakob added, giving Halbarad a taunting smile that the elder Ranger purposely chose to ignore. Turning his smile to Legolas, the younger man mistakenly said, “Let us young ones go out and have all the fun, right?”

Legolas didn’t feel the need to correct the fiery-haired Ranger by telling Jakob that he had lived more years than had this village existed, and so only smiled. Having had enough of Jakob’s exuberance, Halbarad commanded him, “Well, young one, since you have so much energy, go do a round of the village to hurry the villagers along into going home. We’ve less than half an hour before the sun starts to set.”

“Gladly.” With a spry step, Jakob left to do just that, gamboling effusively from the schoolhouse while whistling softly to himself.

Both Halbarad and Legolas watched him go; once the door was shut, Halbarad admitted to the Elf, “He can be a bit much, but he’s a good Ranger. Solid, dependable, and brave. I’d go out with you tonight instead of Jakob, but I think he’s right – the villagers have come to trust me. I was hoping to pass that burden to Aragorn, but being that he’s not feeling up to it, it might be wisest for me to stay behind so that if something foul happens, I can appease them. Ilúvatar knows Jakob wouldn’t be able to keep the villagers from running amok in fear.”

Legolas discerned that Halbarad felt guilty for sending out the Prince and a younger, less experienced Ranger in his stead. Moreover, the elder man left unsaid that should the worst happen and Legolas and Jakob not live past tonight, Aragorn would not live to take over in leading these Edain, either. Pushing away the dread these thoughts brought him, the Elf knew he was as ready as he would ever be, though there was still one more thing he wanted to do before they went about this imprudent task – to see Estel again.

Legolas told Halbarad, dissembling only slightly in his excuse of saying, “I will be right back. I know it won’t be of any use, but I don’t feel right without my bow and long knife, and I want to check on Estel, as well.”

“Fine, fine. I think I will fetch a few more staves and make a couple more torches for us to keep in here, just in case I have need to come out to find you two,” the elder man replied. Fiddling with the lanterns on the table, he added, “And I want to trim the wicks on these lanterns, too. The women and children who stay here in the schoolhouse with us should be along shortly, but I will tell them to hold the noise down,” he cautioned the Elf mildly, as if desirous for Legolas to know that to keep his and Aragorn’s bond a secret he would soon need to mind his actions, while also evincing that he would attempt to allow Estel to sleep a while longer. 

The Prince took the warning to heart. He would not risk Aragorn’s life or reputation but he could not pass up what might be his final chance to see his lover ere he walked out in the night to face only Eru knew what. Legolas walked towards the back of the schoolhouse while Halbarad walked out the front door for more staves. Once back in the small, closed off area behind the bookcases, Legolas first strapped on his quiver, latched his bow thereon, and then secured his long knife. From his own experience, the haunt would not be affected by these weapons at all, but he had not fibbed to Halbarad – having his weapons upon him was of comfort to him. Besides, since they were unsure if the young Adan girl’s specter was the cause of the village’s troubles, there could be an entirely different source for the villager’s deaths, which meant that despite all evidence being stacked against there being a flesh and blood person or persons killing the people of this settlement, they could be wrong, and thus Legolas might need to defend himself against actual physical harm. This done, the Silvan sat back down on the cot beside Aragorn, who did not appear to have moved at all during the Elf’s absence.

He feared for Estel. The Wood-Elf knew that his human lover was destined to die, of course, and he thought of this at least once a day – more often than not, it consumed his waking thoughts for hours on end, ruminating in the back of his mind even whilst he was set about a task, laughing at the twins, hunting game, or even while he was enjoying Aragorn’s body. He did not fear Estel’s death for Estel, so long as the human did not suffer greatly during his demise, nor did he fear what effect the man’s death would have on himself, as he knew that it was only a matter of time – days, hours, minutes, or even seconds later – that he would lie down to die, as well.

No, what frightened Legolas was that after their deaths, he was doomed never to see Estel again. For the Eldar, death was somewhat impermanent. After suitable time in the Halls of Awaiting, if an Elf’s faer was judged by Námo to be ready to return to corporeal form, said Elf might be re-embodied to reside in Valinor. Though the Edain’s souls went to be judged before Námo, as well, it was said that the Eldar and Edain were kept separate from each other in the Halls of Mandos, and what happened to the Edain’s spirits afterwards was a mystery not just to the Eldar, but also to most of the Valar except for Manwë and Námo. Legolas would like to think he would break down any walls barring him from Estel, even in the Halls of Awaiting, but he knew that once they were both dead, Estel would be lost to him forever – quite literally. Perhaps during Dagor Dagoreth, when the final battle against Morgoth occurred and the spirits of the greatest warriors ever to live were released to fight, the Elf could hope to see his human lover during the great conflict, should they both be deemed worthy to contest for the Light against the Darkness; yet, wishing for the end of Arda to occur, even if thereafter Eru’s second song would begin and Arda would be mended, was a direly selfish wish just to rejoin his Adan lover for a brief time. And after Dagor Dagoreth, there was no prophesy stating that the Eldar would have a part in singing Ilúvatar’s second song, though men were prophesied to have some role in it. Even more depressingly, Legolas could not even look forward to nothingness, to insensateness upon his death, for his faer would live on until the end of days, always yearning to be reunited with Estel.

His fear and dread of the man’s death hung heavy upon his lean frame, causing Legolas to curl inwards, his shoulders hunched forward and his back bent. While he didn’t wish to wake the Adan, the Elf could not help but to lean forward and press his lips lightly against the sleeping man’s mouth, which was slightly open as he slumbered. Legolas’ heart beat faster when he resumed sitting upright, his anxiety beginning to overwhelm him just from his own miserable reminder of Aragorn’s mortality. Try though he had to hide his fear for Estel from the man, the Silvan knew that the Adan was well aware of the Prince’s recent bouts of anxiety and of his current unbearable panic on the man’s behalf.

Speaking to the tranquil Ranger though he did not say the words aloud, the Silvan promised,  _Whatever it takes. I do not care what suffering I endure or what horrors I face, meleth nin, as long as you are safe._

From the main room of the schoolhouse, Legolas heard as the women and children began filtering inside for the night. In came mothers and children whose men were dead, travelling, or who were injured or disabled and feared that they would be unable to protect their families, and a few other childless women who had never been married or had long since been widowed. Immediately, they began shifting about pallets to place upon the floor for sleeping, began games for the young ones, and spoke to each other. The Wood-Elf tuned out the noise they made. For now, he wanted only to see and think of Estel. Time and time again over the last several months, the Prince had thought that he might sear the man’s feel, smell, taste, and appearance into his mind so that he could keep Estel with him forever, even if only in memory, and he sought to do this now.

It was because he was intentionally ignoring all of the din in the main room and focusing entirely upon Aragorn that he did not notice as Jakob entered the room. Being a Ranger, Jakob could walk more quietly than could most men, but he was also trying not to wake Aragorn, as planned, and so did not announce himself to the Elf. Instead, seeking to gain Legolas’ attention by placing a hand upon the Silvan’s arm, Jakob startled the preoccupied Elda fiercely, and thus caused Legolas to react poorly.

Jakob did not even get the chance to whisper Legolas’ name, as he had intended to do. The sudden touch by this human hand manifested within Legolas his latent fear of being treated cruelly by men, and he found himself acted purely out of impulse to ensure that that he was not treated thusly again. The Prince stood even as he lifted his arm to knock away the Adan’s hold, while simultaneously pulling his long knife from its sheath with an expert motion. Without conscious thought and acting only on instinct not to be fondled, molested, and ravaged as he had been before, the Wood-Elf used his weaponless arm to shove the man against the heavily laden bookcase behind Jakob, which rocked and nearly tipped forward into the main room, while drawing his honed long knife up to the Ranger’s throat. A yelp of surprise from someone on the other side of the bookcase could be heard, but the commotion did not quiet the small crowd of women and children.

“Do not touch me,” Legolas warned in an animalistic snarl. The Adan’s dark brown eyes were wide with shock and terror; Jakob did not dare to move lest he cut himself on the wavering long knife held to his throat. Lowering his voice to a deadly whisper, the Silvan threatened, “Do not ever think to lay your hands upon me lest you desire to lose them.”

Fortuitously, Halbarad had been following only steps behind Jakob into the ensconcement, and so rapidly stepped forward to try to save his fellow Ranger’s life. In a light, nonthreatening grip, the elder human took hold of Legolas’ forearm – the very arm holding his long knife against Jakob’s throat. Soothingly, Halbarad murmured, “Peace, brother Elf. He meant no harm,” the elder Ranger told the Prince, assuring Legolas, “He is of no threat to you. Let him go, please.”

When the Silvan did not remove his long knife nor release his hold of the Ranger, the Adan beseeched in apology, his voice barely a whisper since he could scarcely breathe due to the Silvan’s tight compression of his chest, “I’m sorry, Legolas. I didn’t mean to startle you. I only meant to get your attention without waking Aragorn.”

He had only met Jakob this day, but he was Estel’s friend, and behind him stood another of Estel’s friends, one whom Legolas had known since before Aragorn was born. Both of these humans could be trusted, by Aragorn’s vow. Some part of him acknowledged this, but even then, Legolas could not bring himself to let go of Jakob nor remove his long knife from the man’s throat. He was surrounded by human men in this village, and currently, two of them crowded too closely around him in the tight space of this small room. In this last year, human men had been the greatest impetus behind his sorrow induced madness and his faer’s near fade from his rhaw, and with one before him now, the Elf’s mind was blankly bloodlusting with rage, which engulfed his rational thought entirely, while his trained, warrior’s body acted on survival instinct alone.

“Greenleaf,” he heard in a hoarse whisper from the bed nearby. “Greenleaf.”

At once, the Elf’s enraged trance was broken, his mind cleared, and his locked muscles were relaxed. Legolas forgot his anger and his desire to hurt the human before him, for a different human now had captured the whole of the Elf’s attention. He sheathed his long knife and removed his arm from Jakob’s chest, which caused the man to stumble away in a hurry, coughing to regain his breath. The Wood-Elf paid him no further mind but pushed roughly past Halbarad to reach the cot upon which Aragorn laid.

“Estel,” he replied in return. Uncaring of the two Rangers who were watching, Legolas took up the Adan’s hand, held it between his own, and brought it to his cheek, where he pressed it tightly. It felt mildly cold, like Estel had been outside in in the algid air, rather than inside beneath a mountain of blankets in a schoolhouse heated to well beyond the comfortable warmth most Edain preferred.

The Ranger tried to sit as he asked, “What’s wrong, Greenleaf? What is it?”

He looked back to the Edain near the gap between the last bookcase and the wall. Halbarad was shooing Jakob out in the hopes of avoiding further incident. “Nothing, Estel,” he replied immediately. “Nothing is wrong.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Found the time to edit the second half of the chapter. Here goes. Enjoy.

Although he had woken entirely upon hearing Legolas growl at Jakob, something else had roused him from his sleep to be sentient enough to hear the Elf speak. Aragorn’s slumber had been dreamless and deep, but the very moment Legolas had startled upon feeling Jakob’s hand upon his shoulder, the Ranger had been pulled from the depths of reverie to the surface of awareness by the distinct, sudden bolt of fear he had felt from the Elf. At once, Aragorn had known that he needed to be awake to appease Legolas’ anxiety or wrath – whatever had been the cause of his snarling at Jakob.

From where he laid upon the cot with Legolas sitting beside him, he could not see Halbarad or Jakob, but he heard them speaking, with Halbarad insisting that Jakob leave for now. Despite that Legolas tried to keep him from sitting, Aragorn pulled his hand out of the Elf’s hold and then pulled himself up to rest his back against the clapboard wall behind him. Jakob was gone from the small room now, but Halbarad lingered at the desk nearby, and from the way he warily watched the Prince, Aragorn knew something ill had happened. He turned his attention back to Legolas. The Elf appeared no different than usual; well, perhaps more worried than he had been the last few weeks in which they had spent in simple pleasures, but he was unhurt and smiling in gladness to see Aragorn awake, it seemed.

“What is happening? What is wrong?” he tried to find out from the Elf.

Giving Estel the clear impression that he wished to change the topic and thus not have to answer the questions put to him, Legolas told the Adan, “It is nearly nightfall. Jakob volunteered to accompany me to look for whatever is terrorizing the village. He and I are going out to look for the haunt shortly.”

All sleepiness fled Estel to learn this. He flung the blankets off his body and swung his legs over the edge of the thin mattress, saying, “Why? You cannot just go out and pray for the best, hoping that you might see what comes when no one else has managed to avoid it thus far.”

Before Legolas could answer, Halbarad uneasily cleared his throat and interrupted, “I’m going to check that the women and children have all they need within the schoolhouse before the sun sets.”

Neither Aragorn nor Legolas responded to this. They were too intent on the argument they both knew would now occur. The Elf laid a hand upon the Ranger’s thigh, which he squeezed lightly, and said, “Jakob and Halbarad have a plan… a haphazard plan, perhaps, but a plan nonetheless. We will carry shuttered lanterns and unlit oiled torches. If we see or sense anything, we will light a torch, which I suppose we hope will frighten away the specter, since it seems that she, or they, only kill at night.” Again, the Prince palpated Aragorn’s muscled thigh with affection, adding, “It is the only plan we have, Estel. I know it is foolhardy, but we must take the chance.”

 _That is a shoddy plan indeed. They risk their lives based on guesses. But I suppose there is nothing else to go on except guesses right now, and no one else who might see the haunt other than Greenleaf,_ Estel agreed in silent cogitations, his agreement leaving a bitter taste upon his tongue, for he was not pleased at all that this plan did not involve him, while the planning itself had been done without him, as well. Legolas slid his hand up and down the man’s leg, from shin to mid-thigh; this mild affection did as the Elf intended and both preoccupied and soothed Aragorn, which only made the Ranger evermore bitter because he felt he was being treated like a sick child.

"Then I will go with you," he offered, sliding upon his rear so that he sat upon the edge of the bed, intending to rise to arm himself. Even now, the Adan felt the warmth fleeing his body and he fought back the urge to shiver, while hoping that the Prince would not notice. With a false smile, he argued to the Silvan, "I should be with you, not Jakob."

“No, you are ill, Estel.” Having not been fooled by the man’s attempts to hide the chilled shivers wracking Aragorn, Legolas succinctly noted just what the Ranger had hoped the Elf had not, “You have been out of the covers for mere moments and are shaking already. Besides, if it is indeed the girl’s haunt causing these troubles, then you have already been touched by her. A second time would only hasten this illness she has caused you, if not kill you outright. I will not chance it. You will stay here.”

Planting his booted feet upon the ground, Aragorn gently removed Legolas’ hand, which had remained gripped upon Estel’s thigh as if to hold him down upon the bed. “Greenleaf, I want to go with you.”

Firmly and simply, the Elf did not offer further argument, but merely told the Adan as he stood, crossed his arms over his lean chest, and shook his head, “No.”

Estel knew from experience that the Wood-Elf would not relent. Few were the times in the human’s life that Legolas had told the Adan no, and fewer were the times that he had said it with such quiet, ardent force. Perhaps to many, the Wood-Elf often appeared like a withy willow branch, able to be bent and bound to someone’s will, and while this was sometimes true when it came to those whom the Prince trusted – including his father, who by Aragorn’s thinking ought not to be trusted at all – Legolas was quite capable of being just as stubborn as any other person, and more so when the Elf was concerned for the welfare of his friends, family, or lover. No amount of arguing would change the Prince’s mind. No wheedling, threats, or cajoling would make Legolas agree that risking Estel’s life was at all worth it – not to him, and most certainly not to Aragorn.

_Sweet Eru, I wish the twins were here. Then, one of them could go with Greenleaf instead of Jakob._

Jakob was a valiant and excellently trained Ranger, he was trustworthy and kind, and though his past was checkered with the misdeeds of a misspent youth, the fiery haired man had turned his back on all that to become a morally upright Watcher. Estel knew that Jakob would protect Legolas with as much eagerness as he would protect any of the villagers or another Ranger, so Aragorn could not argue that the Elf would be safer should Estel be there instead. Moreover, the Ranger realized that Legolas was right. Estel felt dazed and sluggish. He would only slow down the Elf, divert him from watching out for danger to himself by forcing Legolas to watch out for Estel, instead, and thus only place the Silvan in harm’s way. Besides which, the Prince was also right in that Aragorn was freezing cold. He was sorely tempted to reach up to see if icicles were hanging from his whiskers, so cold did he feel to be. If he went outside to hunt the haunt, he would be useless.

_Jakob is the better choice, then._

And so, the human relented with acrimonious reluctance, wish how he might that he could accompany Legolas rather than his fellow Ranger. “Promise me that you will be safe, Greenleaf.” When the Elf immediately nodded to this request, Aragorn grabbed the Prince’s forearm to gain his full attention, saying, “No, wait. Do not merely nod. Say it. Promise me that you will light your torch at the slightest provocation. Promise me that you will not approach or interact with the haunt, even if it is the girl haunt… no, especially if it is the girl’s haunt.”

The Elf knew Aragorn was thinking of how Legolas had reached out for the specter, offering her comfort when it might have cost him his life, had not Aragorn pulled him away. Moving to stand in front of the sitting man, the Silvan laid his hands upon Estel’s shoulders and looked down into his beloved Ranger’s face.

“We are only trying to ascertain her presence, or any other presence, Estel. We do not seek to fight it tonight. We will wait for advice from Minyatar before we try anything of that nature. But I promise you,” the Wood-Elf said in conciliation, though since he gave his word, Aragorn did not doubt that the Prince would keep it when he oathed, “even for the most trivial of reasons, I will light the torch, and I will not approach or interact with her or anything else. I promise you, Estel. I will try to keep Jakob safe, as well, and we will both return once done.”

Since he could not join Legolas and while these promises would not exactly keep the Prince safe, for now, it was all for which Estel could ask. He murmured acerbically, “It is selfish of me to say, but if it comes to it, save yourself rather than Jakob.”

The hands upon his shoulders tightened and the Elf huffed in disbelief. “You do not mean that.”

“I do mean it. Jakob is sometimes erratic and foolish. Do not let him lead you into danger, just because he goes running into it.” He looked up to see the annoyance upon the Prince’s visage, which surprised him, given that he had just been woken from a deep sleep by Legolas reprimanding or admonishing Jakob over something. Taking a deep breath, the Ranger tried to calm his worry and thus his irritation. “I only mean that you are still the only one who can see the haunt. The village needs you, Greenleaf. But more importantly, I need you. Come back to me… at all costs.”

Aragorn reached out, grabbed the tunic lying over the middle of Legolas’ chest, and pulled the Elf towards him. He did not need to pull hard, for the Silvan willingly leant down and forward until they were face to face, their gazes locked, and their breath mingling in the scant space between them. Forgetting everything but each other, the two cleared the final few inches to meld their lips together in a needy but gentle buss. When Aragorn tried to pull away to look into his lover's cerulean eyes again, the Elf kept the Adan from doing so by seizing hold of the Ranger's ears, one in each hand, and with this hold compelling Aragorn into remaining close so that the Elf could deepen their kiss. Thoroughly, roughly, and breathtakingly, Legolas explored the man's mouth with his tongue, delving past Estel's teeth, sliding his lingua along the human's tongue, and sweeping through the Adan's orifice until Estel was gasping for breath and his ever present desire for the Elf was rising. When the Silvan’s own desire began to rise, Legolas unwillingly pulled away, his fingers playing over the man's jaw.

“I promise to come back to you if I can. I will always come back to you, if I can,” the Elf promised Estel as he had once promised his Ada, though Aragorn did not realize this. Gently, lovingly, Legolas stroked the man’s bearded visage, teasing him, “When this is over, you are shaving your face. As much as I love the feel of your whiskers, I think they are scratching my skin red. The villagers will wonder why I have beard burn but no beard.”

He let the lithesome Elf’s lightsome mood make him laugh, for in truth, like Legolas, Estel was well aware that one of them might die tonight, and Aragorn would not have a single ill word standing between them upon their parting. Again, he pulled the Wood-Elf towards him, inciting Legolas into kissing the Adan tenderly at first, and then nipping and laving headily at Aragorn's mouth as if savoring the very taste and texture of the Adan’s tongue and lips. Aragorn would never grow tired of the Silvan's affection, but for some reason, did not like this a bit. To Estel, it felt as if the Wood-Elf were saying goodbye, as if Legolas felt certain that he would not return; or perhaps that Legolas was using this quiet moment between them to bolster his courage, which evinced how frightened the Elf felt. And rightfully so, in Estel’s thinking, since he was also beside himself with fear for Legolas.

Abruptly, Legolas stepped back from the Adan, which told Aragorn that someone neared the opening to the small room. A moment later, Halbarad stepped within, knocking a single time against the nearest bookcase’s side to get their attention. “Legolas, Jakob wants to go over the route you two will take a final time.”

“I’ll see you again before we leave,” the Prince told the Ranger, ere he stood and strode from the room, bypassing Halbarad without so much as a glance.

The odd exchange evinced the laegel’s disquiet or embarrassment, and Aragorn would know why. Carrying a bowl of fragrant, hot soup and a crusty roll of bread, the elder human walked farther into the room and sat both the bowl and roll upon the desk. In response to Aragorn’s worry, Halbarad offered, “They’ll be fine. Don’t worry. There are torches set up along the paths that they intend to walk, meaning that should one of their torches burn out or get lost, there will be replacements. Also means they can light up the whole road, if they need. And if light doesn’t work, well, every house along their route has at least one able-bodied man who is armed, at ready for Jakob’s call to come out to fight – depending on what it is they are fighting, that is. I told Jakob not to call out if there was no hope to kill it, so no more lives would be lost. But I don’t think it will come to that.”

 _Legolas didn’t tell me that part,_ Estel fretted, once more considering arming himself and trying to join the Prince. _We didn’t have much time to speak at all, did we? I doubt I would have even known they were leaving if I hadn’t woken on my own in time to see them off._

Halbarad adjusted the bowl of soup so that it wouldn’t spill, and then sat himself on the desktop beside it, saying to his Chieftain, “You’ve picked a fine mate, Aragorn, a sharp mind and an able warrior, I’m sure, but Legolas reminds me of one of Gandalf’s fireworks – a violent burst of fire on a short fuse, just waiting to be lit before it goes off.”

 _How does he know of Legolas and me?_  Estel wondered of the man’s statement, but then, not having been awake when Halbarad admitted to Legolas that the elder man had known for years that Aragorn was in love with the Prince even before Aragorn realized it himself, the younger Ranger decided,  _He likely saw Greenleaf sleeping beside me, saw me reach for Legolas’ hand or Legolas for mine earlier. I suppose we have not been careful to hide it from him._

“What happened a while ago?” he asked Halbarad, choosing to ignore Halbarad’s slight to Legolas for now. The elder man was not just his friend, but had been a mentor of sorts to the younger Ranger when first Aragorn had taken his oath to be a Watcher. He esteemed the older man’s opinion greatly, even if right now Halbarad was wrong in his opinion of the Prince. “With Legolas and Jakob. Why were they arguing?”

Whatever had happened, it had clearly unnerved Halbarad, for even now, at the remembrance the elder man shifted uncomfortably where he sat. “Jakob came in here to get Legolas. I was right behind him. He put his hand on Legolas’ shoulder rather than call out his name, since we had planned to let you sleep. It must’ve startled Legolas.” Halbarad looked away from Estel, again shifted his seat upon the hard top of the wooden desk, and then shrugged his shoulders as if to dismiss the severity of what he was about to say. “You know I’ve fought amongst Elves before, but I haven’t ever seen an Elf move as fast as Legolas did just then. You might have thought the Dark Lord himself had walked up behind him rather than Jakob. One moment he was sitting beside you, the next he had Jakob pushed up against the bookcase with his long knife at Jakob’s throat, threatening to cut his hands off if he ever touched him again.”

 _Morgoth’s balls, Greenleaf,_ Estel cursed to himself. Truth be told, he wasn’t angry with Legolas for reacting so poorly to being handled by Jakob, since Aragorn couldn’t say he blamed the Elf for not wanting to be touched by a human, but for Legolas to have been so preoccupied that he hadn’t heard or noticed Jakob’s approach was explainable in only one of two ways – either the Elf’s grief was returning, which dulled the Elven senses and was the reason the two merchants had managed to sneak upon the pair in the woods near Lake-town months ago, or Legolas was so worried for Aragorn’s well-being he was driven to distraction by it. Either reason meant that the Elf was not in the best condition to be seeking out haunts tonight.

“Aragorn,” the elder Ranger intonated evenly, “he looked downright murderous. I tried to calm him and he didn’t even seem to hear me. If you hadn’t woken and said his name, I think he might have slit Jakob’s throat.”

“No, he wouldn’t have, I promise you,” Aragorn hollowly promised Halbarad. He reached up and rubbed his forehead, where an ache was beginning to form. “Listen: suffice to say that Legolas has reason to be wary of Edain. Do as Legolas told Jakob – do not touch him. He isn’t violent or dangerous,” he was quick to amend, hoping he was not giving Halbarad the impression that Legolas was unstable, “but he can be. He will be, if he is cornered or feels threatened. If he is like one of Gandalf’s fireworks,” Estel tried to explain by using Halbarad’s metaphor, “then he is one that has already blown apart, and I and my family have spent months trying to piece him back together. Just be as wary of him as he will be of you, and nothing will come of it.”

For several long moments, Halbarad sat with his arms crossed over his chest, his face stoic and unreadable. Having known the elder Ranger for years, though, Aragorn knew Halbarad was deciphering the meaning behind what Estel wouldn’t say – that is, the underlying reasoning for Legolas’ behavior. Whatever conclusions he drew, he did not speak them aloud, but even if he had, Aragorn would not have disavowed the older man of them, for there was nothing that Halbarad might dream up to explain Legolas’ actions that could be worse than through what the Elf had actually endured.

Finally, Halbarad nodded his agreement. “Fair enough. It gives me some reservations about sending Jakob out with him tonight, though.”

“I think Jakob learnt his lesson to keep his hands to himself,” Estel replied. For his own part, while Aragorn was glad that Jakob was unscathed, he also did not like the idea of his fellow Ranger touching the Prince, and so felt little sympathy for Jakob – friend or not. “Besides, Legolas will apologize, I’m sure of it. He has no cause to trust Jakob or any of these villagers, and still he risks his life for them. Do not forget that. He is a gentle and good Elf, I promise.”

“I assume he would have to be, if you’ve chosen him as your mate.” Again, Halbarad nodded in agreement, ere he shook his head roughly to dismiss their serious conversation. He picked up the bowl of steaming soup beside him and handed it to his Chieftain, saying playfully, “Here. Seems like we are all making promises tonight, because I promised Legolas earlier than when you woke I would see to it that you ate. You’re awake, so eat. Don’t make me a break a promise to the Elf who just threatened to cut off a man’s hands,” the elder human said with a brief grin of wry amusement.

Snorting in dark mirth, Estel took the bowl offered to him. He did not hunger but knew that he needed to eat to keep up his strength. Halbarad had brought him no spoon, so Estel merely tilted the bowl and drank from the rich beef broth.  _Halbarad can't have made this, because it tastes too good,_  he thought but did not say aloud. In several noisy, long gulps, Aragorn emptied the bowl, only to have it taken from his hand and the roll pressed into his palm in its place. Dutifully, Estel ate the hard bread, truly feeling a bit better now that his belly was no longer empty. And yet, since he had thrown off the blankets and not replaced them, Aragorn's shivering was continually worsening.

This did not go unnoticed by Halbarad, who took up the covers and laid them back over the younger man's legs, saying, "I hope Elladan and Elrohir do come, as Legolas seems to think. Perhaps they will have some idea of how to treat this condition you've contracted."

Being that this was not normal illness, Estel thought his brothers would only be able to worry, and would have little to offer in terms of treating him. He did not deny Halbarad of his hope, though, and as he dusted the bread crumbs from the blanket, merely responded, "If nothing else, they can try to keep me warm as Greenleaf did. His lying beside me was the only time I’ve truly felt warm all day, except for the other times he’s been near."

“You could always come into the main room and lie in the floor with the women and children. They cuddle up like wolf pups when they sleep,” the man replied jokingly, though to Estel, the idea sounded like a good one, had he not thought it inappropriate to curl up with a gaggle of strangers – and most all of them women, besides.

Indeed, it seemed to Aragorn that should he try to share warmth with another human as he had Legolas earlier, Estel might leech the warmth from the other Adan as had the haunt leeched the warmth from him. He wondered,  _Since Elves don’t normally get cold, maybe the haunt can’t do the same to Legolas._  But this was mere wishful thinking on his part, and much like everything else they thought they knew of the haunt, it was also pure speculation. He admitted his thoughts aloud, telling the elder man, “I think I would freeze them. Besides, we still don’t know if this is something that can be passed from person to person.”

“I see now why Legolas was willing to take the chance, then.” Halbarad glanced to the gap in the bookcases, where beyond, the women and children were making the comforting noises of people going about their nightly rituals before bed, while the less audible voices of Jakob and Legolas could be heard as they discussed their route in stilted, awkward tones. “The Prince has the look of a man with nothing left to lose – except you.”

It was strange to hear Halbarad speak of him and the Elf as a pair, and even stranger that the elder man showed no judgment against it. Unwilling to get into a discussion of his and the Prince’s bond at the moment, though, Aragorn now asked of Halbarad to make him a promise. “Speaking of Legolas: if something happens to me, if this illness kills me and for some reason no one from the valley comes, please, Halbarad, try to get Legolas to Imladris.”

“I will. Although, I’m not leaving this village until these people are safe.” Halbarad gave Aragorn a grimace of regret, for he hated not being able to offer more. He would do anything within reason for his Chieftain upon Estel’s death, just as would Aragorn do for Halbarad. It was an unspoken rule for the Rangers that they take care of each other’s meager final wishes if given the chance, since few of them had any family or friends to do it on their behalf, other than their fellow Rangers.

It wasn’t what Aragorn wanted to hear but it was the best he could expect. In the darkest depths of his mind, which was the only part of him even willing to consider the possibility of the Elf’s death, Aragorn knew that Halbarad’s agreement to this promise was moot, for he knew Legolas would never live to see Imladris should Aragorn die in this village. But still, it comforted Estel to have Halbarad’s oath, and right now, he would take what he could get. Therefore, he merely replied, “Thank you.” 

Jakob came into the room, his weapons upon him and his torch and lantern in hand, to tell Halbarad and Aragorn, “The sun is set and it will be full dark shortly. We are leaving.”

He cast aside the blankets, stood with purpose, and then strode to the main room; Halbarad walked just a step behind Aragorn with his hand out, as if fearing Estel would fall, though the younger man was walking gracefully and hastily in his effort to see Legolas. With Halbarad, Jakob, and several women and children inside the schoolhouse, Aragorn could not do as he wished and kiss the Prince goodbye, take his hand and compel Legolas into renewing his promise to be careful, nor fold the Elf in his embrace to feel his lover’s body against his own a final time before the Wood-Elf and Jakob left to patrol the village.

Legolas stood with his weapons strapped upon his person, an unlit torch in one hand and a shuttered lantern in the other. With a nod of his head towards the door, Estel indicated to Legolas to step aside for a moment. Since they had no privacy and had already said their farewells for the nonce, Aragorn merely told the Silvan quietly, “Be careful, Greenleaf. Remember to return to me.”

His back twisted to the others so that they could not see him, the Prince smiled lovingly at the human, “Promise to be here and be well when I return, and you have a deal.”

Aragorn laughed at the Elf’s good cheer, which was honestly felt, from the sparkle in the Silvan’s eyes. “Deal.”

Jakob and Halbarad came up behind Legolas, which Aragorn told the Elf of with a flick of his eyes towards the other two Rangers, just to warn the Silvan in case he had thought to say anything else that he might not want to be overheard.

Behind them, the room had grown quiet as the women inside realized that the Elf and Ranger were going out into the dark, where the unnatural force hunted. Estel glanced back at the rest of the schoolhouse to see how the women watched Legolas and Jakob, the same reverent hope in their faces that had lain in Halbarad’s face earlier, when Halbarad had learnt of the Elf’s ability to see the haunt. Legolas gave Estel a final smile, pulled the door open, and walked without, Jakob right behind him.

“My Eru guide you, my friends,” Halbarad told Legolas and Jakob as he shut the door on the two.

_May Eru guide you, indeed, meleth nin. And if you don’t return soon, I am coming out to find you._


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is officially the last chapter that I had completely written before the computer crashed, so this is the last chapter that I absolutely know will be posted. That isn't to say that I've decided to quit; rather, it is merely a forewarning that future chapter may be tear-stained, prologued with profanity, and/or infrequent. I hope not, though, as I truly want to finish this story I've started. 
> 
> Anyway, have a good New Year, lovely people. Enjoy.

“They will be fine,” Halbarad promised his Chieftain, sounding so assured that Estel was tempted to believe him. “The whole of the circuitous route they are walking takes only about an hour to complete from here and back, provided that they do not stray from it, which I have implored Jakob not to do, since the torches set out do not extend beyond the predetermined path,” Halbarad explained, laying a fatherly hand upon his shivering Chieftain’s shoulder, “but even should they have cause to stray, I think the lanterns and oil torches will work. They’ll be fine,” he repeated.

“I hope you are right,” Aragorn mumbled, his whole body suddenly overtaken with a bout of shudders that unintentionally jolted Halbarad’s hand from his shoulder.

Seeing this, the elder man suggested, “Why don’t you go back to bed? I will wake you when they return.”

There was no chance that he could go back to the cot and lie around in wait for Legolas and Jakob to return. He shook his head in negation of the offer. “Is everyone inside now?”

Halbarad looked around the schoolhouse and counted under his breath. “Yes, all accounted for here. I can only assume that out in the village everyone has buckled down for the night – or at least, I hope they have. As I said earlier, some of the men were riled up in thinking that you and Legolas were bringing this situation to a head tonight, and since we put them to work to try to burn off their eagerness, they ought to be battened down for the night, except the ones we stationed in the houses along the path Legolas and Jakob are walking. But I expect some of them will be up all night anyway, hoping to be of use or have some word of what happens.”

Eight women and six children were inside with the two Rangers, and every pair of adult eyes were upon Estel and Halbarad at the moment. One young mother was breastfeeding her infant while standing beside another woman who had a child upon a table, where she had her ear pressed to his chest to listen, another mother was feeding a toddler what appeared to be mushed peas, though the child was wearing more of the greenish substance than she managed to get into her mouth, and another woman was reading to two young girls who sat in a circle around her. The last child was rolling a ball back and forth along the crevice between the planks of the wooden floor. As Aragorn strode towards the fire, thinking to try surreptitiously to warm himself for a moment, the boy with the ball toddled to Estel and grabbed his leg. Surprised, for he had not seen the child approach from the side, Aragorn nearly threw the boy off his leg when he didn’t pull his stride in time. Luckily, the boy’s hold was steadfast and he merely swung along with the man’s leg, much to the child’s delight. Looking down to the laughing boy, Estel smiled at his exuberance.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” a girl of no more than fifteen told Estel as she grabbed the boy and held him tight. Appearing not as if she were afraid of Aragorn but as if she were afraid to have bothered him during what she must have assumed was important business, the girl bowed her head and apologized again, saying, “I’m sorry. My boy’s a wanderer and he has no fear of strangers, it seems.”

“No reason for apologies,” he kindly told the girl. She looked very young to have a child, but then, so did most human women when they married, by Aragorn’s thinking. Because he had grown up amongst Elves, he sometimes forgot how quickly the lives of the Edain passed – even though he was one of them, of course, and despite that because of his own distant Elven heritage, he aged more slowly than did the rest of his kind. Bending his fingers to resemble a claw, Estel tickled the child’s ribs, earning him a tittering giggle from the boy, who squirmed and wriggled in his mother’s hold. Laughing along with the child, Estel told the young mother, “I think he wanted to climb my leg like a tree trunk. He is a strapping lad.”

His kindness had the intended effect upon the woman, for his compliments to her child went farther than any compliments he could have paid her, and so, she lifted her head and smiled proudly at Aragorn. “That he is. He is already trying to climb trees, actually, although he just learnt to walk.”

Halbarad came up to where Aragorn and the woman stood. Speaking loudly so that all the women and children inside could hear him over their own conversations and noisiness, the elder Ranger introduced Estel, telling them, “This is the Chieftain of the Rangers, Aragorn. As you’ve likely already heard, he and the Elf who just left, whose name is Legolas, have come to help your village.”

A murmur ran through the women, though the children paid Halbarad no mind. Halbarad then introduced Estel to the woman to whom he had been speaking, telling his Chieftain, “This is Renetta. And this little one,” Halbarad said, holding his arms out to the young boy, who giggled and held his own out to be taken by the elder Ranger, “is Nat.”

Another of the women, her back bent from years of hard work in the fields and her eyes clouded, carefully ambled towards them. She gazed up at Aragorn without truly seeing him. “Are you hungry, young man?” she asked. “We’ve soup and bread.”

“I have eaten, but thank you kindly,” he told the elderly woman, who still had her hand out as if trying to find Aragorn. He held out his forearm, which she took with a smile, and then steadied herself with it by clasping Estel’s arm between her own limb and her heavy, pendulous breast. She patted his arm, feeling the muscles there, it seemed, for next she said, “You feel strong. Perhaps you can move this pot for me.”

Giving Halbarad a grin, Aragorn gladly walked the woman to the hearth, where he had been headed anyway, and aided her into sitting in a rocking chair there. She pointed towards the fire, asking of him, “Take that off the flames ere it scorches, will you? Use that cloth there so you don’t get burnt. And mind you don’t spill it.”

Aragorn did as he was asked, taking up the large and heavy soup pot by its handle, and sitting it by the fireplace upon a low table. When done, she already had another task for him, for she asked, “Can you find my basket?”

“Now, now, mother,” Halbarad called the elderly lady, though in truth, he was older than was she and would have appeared it, had not he shared the same Númenórean heritage as Aragorn that slowed their aging. “I want for Aragorn to meet Liandra just now. I will come back and help you with your yarn.”

Scowling at Halbarad without truly seeing him, she warned the older Ranger as if he were a child while shaking her finger at him, “Last time you knotted my yarn!”

“I promise to take more care this time. Just a moment,” he appeased the elderly woman.

Halbarad grinned at Aragorn, who despite his worry and foul temper found amusement in seeing his fellow Ranger being so subservient and kind to the old woman. When they were far enough across the room not to be heard by the elderly lady, Estel teased Halbarad, saying, “You knotted her yarn? Shame on you.”

In an uncharacteristic show of hilarity, for Halbarad was as slow to laughter as he was to anger, the Ranger chuckled with abandon and clapped Estel on the back. “I did. I couldn’t sit still long enough to allow her to wind her wool as she wanted,” he said, lowering his voice to add, “and I’m sure it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she’s nearly blind. In any case, come,” he insisted, guiding Aragorn with the hand he had upon the young man’s back towards the only adult-sized table in the room, upon which another elderly woman had a young infant. Her visage hidden behind a long curtain of hoary, wavy hair, the woman was tutting and making faces at the young child, who was laughing and cooing right back at her. When near, Halbarad introduced the two, telling Aragorn, “This is Liandra, the village’s herbalist and healer. Liandra,” he said once he had the woman’s attention, “this is the Chieftain of the Dúnedain, and my friend, Aragorn.”

The woman nodded but did not stop in her task of babbling at the baby while spreading upon the child lying on the table before her a poultice of camphor, which from its smell and appearance she had made from rosemary leaves. She stuck her hand out as if about to ask for something, and knowing just what she wanted, Aragorn took up the roll of dingy but washed linen nearby and placed it in her hand.

“Thank you,” she told Estel, ere she began wrapping the babe’s chest in the linen to keep the poultice in place. When done, she finally looked up while picking up the infant, who immediately grabbed two tight fistfuls of her long silver hair and began yanking. Impervious to this treatment, the herbalist faced Halbarad and Aragorn while handing the infant to his mother, who was hovering nearby. The mother of the child thanked the healer, tears of gratitude in her eyes, but the older woman only nodded and instructed her, “He will likely cough and retch while trying to feed, but keep him swaddled and give him the breast as often as he will take it so he eats enough.”

As the mother carried her child to be with the other women at the fireplace, Estel noted how the infant’s face was rubicund with fever, while his coughing sounded like a small dog barking, which led Aragorn to ask, “Does he have the croup? My father used to spread camphor poultices upon me when I was around his age to soothe the croup, although we obtain it from a tree that grows in the valley, which was brought from the southern regions centuries ago. Does distillation of rosemary leaves work as well?” he wondered in true curiosity, since he was always eager to learn of new methods of healing.

“Yes, it is the croup. I’ve heard of the camphor tree, but never used it. We’ve always used rosemary leaves here, though I’ve nearly run out in my herb garden and now everyone is too frightened to go out in search of herbs in the forest,” she replied with absentminded courteousness, as if too busy to take true interest in what Aragorn said. However, though Liandra began packing her bag with the items she had used to aid the infant, she stopped to glare at Aragorn as the question occurred to her, “You know of herbs and healing?”

Unwilling to divulge his true relationship to the Peredhel Lord of Imladris, Estel alluded as he handed her some of the items sitting farther away on the table so she could replace them in her satchel, “I was trained in Rivendell under Lord Elrond in the art of healing and herbalism. And I have camphor oil amongst my own supplies, if you need it. I can always obtain more upon my return to the valley.”

Crossing her scrawny arms over her bounteous chest, Liandra said in a voice gruff and demanding with the frankness old age seemed to nurture, “If you are trained as a healer, Ranger, what made you take up arms to rend flesh rather than mend it?”

Taken aback by her brusque and somewhat discourteously blunt question, he was further confused by Halbarad’s bray of laughter. The elder Ranger answered for Aragorn, saying, “Because he is a man of many talents, Liandra, and can do what needs to be done – and aptly so, in both professions. If you have need of any help in serving the sick of the village, Aragorn is the one to ask. He’s likely also brought more supplies than just camphor, if you’ve run out of something else.”

It was a fair offer but Estel could tell that Liandra was not amused by Halbarad’s answer nor impressed by the kind proposal. While the elderly woman continued to view him with suspicion, Aragorn fought not to shiver. Since she was a healer, Liandra would soon see that something was amiss with him, and Estel did not want anyone trying to coddle him. It was often said that healers made the worst patients – Aragorn did not deny this truism. In an unnecessarily rough pull of the drawstrings upon her satchel, Liandra cinched her bag shut, looped it over her bony shoulder, and then crossed her arms over her chest yet again, all the while eyeing Estel with what looked to the young Adan to be anger, though what he had done to upset the healer, he could not guess.

“Halbarad!” a young woman called from the massive hearth at the opposite end of the room. Both Rangers turned to look at her; she was trying to lift a pot filled with water to boil for them to clean up themselves, their children, or the dishes – or all three. She sweetly asked, “Can you please come move this pot for us?”

“Excuse me,” the elder Ranger told the two healers, giving Aragorn a peculiar smile before he went to aid the women at the fireplace.

 _Something tells me that these women are enjoying having Halbarad around, since they are all widows or unmarried. And from his good temper, I’m guessing Halbarad is enjoying the attention and company,_ Estel decided, shaking his head as he returned his attention to Liandra.

The woman was still staring at him. Just when the silence between the two healers had grown uncomfortable and Estel considered moving away with a contrived excuse, Liandra asked him with interest, “You were trained in Elvish medicines?”

Relieved that Liandra’s inexplicable irritation for him was now absent, Estel leant upon the edge of the table, tightened his muscles in an attempt to keep them from shuddering and jumping, and imagined with longing the warm cocoon of heat that he and Legolas had made in the bed earlier, while wishing he and the Silvan were back under the blankets – or if nothing else, that Legolas was back with him. To Liandra he replied, “I was, yes, but not just to heal the Eldar. Elven bodies are similar to Edain bodies, as you likely know, but so are Dwarven and Hobbit bodies, for that matter; and yet, each has its own peculiarities. Lord Elrond is master of all means of healing, having forgotten more of the art than could I ever know. I was very fortunate to learn from him.”

Liandra’s arms dropped to her sides and rather than crossness, she now looked to Estel with a grudging respect. In fact, she now smiled at him slyly, removed the satchel from her shoulder, and stepped closer to him. “Then you don’t need for me to tell you that you are sick.” Surprising Aragorn with a quickness that belied her advanced age, the elderly herbalist laid the back of her hand against his brow and tsked lightly. “You are not flushed and have no fever, but you tremble like a dry leaf being shaken from a tree in an autumnal gust.”

The vivid but accurate description had Estel snickering; Liandra’s scowl ended his ostensible amusement but he thought to himself with a stifled smile, _She looks offended – is it because I laughed at her imagery or because I’m sick with symptoms contrary to what she expects?_ For Estel, having someone other than his father or brothers get mad at him for having the impudence to be sick was odd, though indeed, Elrond, Elladan, and Elrohir often vented their vexation at his human illnesses by appearing annoyed with Estel for his ill health at times, though it was always their love and concern for him underlying their actions. _Seems that Liandra is the same… taking it personally for anyone to be sick and not ask for her help._

“I’m fine,” he found himself saying, and after saying so, he thought immediately of Legolas, who had declared this very thing time and time again during the last several months. Most of the time the Elf had said it, Legolas had not been fine at all, just as Estel now. Liandra appraised the Ranger for a moment; she was not fooled.

“My grandmother’s mother helped to settle this village. The skills of herbalism and healing have been passed down in my family for generations,” she presented as if Estel asked for this information. Liandra abruptly took Aragorn by the elbow as if in need of his support, when in truth, she covertly tendered her own support to Estel as she led him away from the crowd of women and children and back towards from where he had come – the clandestine ensconcement behind the bookshelves at the back of the schoolhouse. Now inside the tiny room, Liandra pulled Aragorn along until they stood beside the cot. “From the time I could walk I have picked and ground herbs, made extractions, and such, under my mother’s guidance.”

“And have you passed this knowledge down to your daughter or son?” he asked congenially, while none too gently, she pushed him towards the bed.

Out of respect for her age and her profession, Aragorn sat upon the thin mattress to hear her out, for she apparently had something on her mind that she wanted for Estel to hear. The elderly healer grabbed the blankets to drape over Aragorn’s shoulders; although it was somewhat peculiar to have this stranger worry over him in such a motherly fashion, it also soothed the man for mysterious reasons. Other than on the rare times when Estel was a child and his kindhearted and nearly always cheerful foster sister Arwen had been in the valley, Aragorn had enjoyed few maternal presences in his mortal life. Always when younger and even when older, Estel had been surrounded by his brothers, his father, his fellow Rangers, or Legolas, all of whom had cared for him aptly, but of course, not with the same motherly demeanor that Liandra showed him now. Strangely, though, it wasn’t until the healer moved back and viewed her work to see if she had secured the blankets around him tightly that the Ranger realized how the herbalist reminded him of his foster father, who treated everyone around him like another of his children.

“My son lives near Bree now, as a brewer. However, my daughter… well, I taught her everything I know, just as I learnt it from my mother. She would have been the one to treat that child for croup, being that I had handed the care of the villagers over to her, but…” Liandra trailed off, dropping heavily into the rickety chair beside the small desk at the head of the bed upon which Aragorn sat. She took in a deep breath and laid her satchel of sundry healing items upon the floor at her feet. “But she died weeks ago in the same manner as the rest of these poor souls. When word spread that a family on the western outskirts of the village had died from unnatural, bizarre causes, my Maylie went out to investigate that evening. Never made it back. Not alive, anyway.”

All of his amusement, thin as it had been, vanished at once. Aragorn shifted his seat upon the cot so he faced the elderly herbalist directly. “I am sorry about your daughter’s death.”

With a wave of her wrinkled, chapped, but strong hand, Liandra set aside the Ranger’s condolences and went on to say what she felt needed to be said, “It was a habit of my grandmother’s mother, of my grandmother, of my mother, and then of mine to keep records of information concerning any uncommon illnesses and their treatments of our people here in the village. I have spent the weeks since Maylie’s death looking over those books and have found nothing comparable to what now afflicts the people here.” For the first time in the few minutes since he had met her, the elderly woman did not appear cocksure, but looked to Aragorn with the same confusion and worry he felt. “I have had nothing to go on concerning these deaths, for no one lived to show any symptoms. Except you,” the elderly woman said in droll accusation while leaning forward to look Estel directly in the eye.

Somehow, the herbalist managed to appear both displeased that Estel was sick while also looking pleased to have the chance to study what she thought to be a disease with a potential cure. Aragorn glanced to the gap between the bookcases and the wall while wondering how much he should share with Liandra. He did not want to create alarm amongst the women and children outside – an alarm that would be sequestered here in the schoolhouse for the night, but tomorrow would run rampant throughout the village.

Sensing the Ranger’s hesitance, Liandra questioned simply, “Am I right? You need not worry that I will spread word of the true cause of your illness with everyone,” she assured him, for she could sense Aragorn’s need not to begin a panic. “But you must know you risk the lives of everyone in the next room by bringing this sickness into close quarters such as these.”

 _There is nothing for it. She must be told,_ he decided with a sigh, rubbing his aching forehead as he did so. Perhaps it had been Halbarad’s intent for Estel to share this information with the healer all along, he reflected. In fact, as he recalled, Halbarad had earlier told them that it was only because of this elderly lady’s intervention that the village had been willing to be led by Halbarad and Jakob, to follow the Rangers’ advice, and thus were untold lives saved by the villagers’ acquiescence into staying inside with well-lit houses during the night. _I can’t dismiss her. She is the tenuous bridge between the villagers and us, it seems. Besides, even though this is not caused by true illness and thus not relevant to medicine, she might have other knowledge that could be of use to us._

“You are right – I am sick from something similar to from what the recently deceased villagers have died,” he admitted, clinging to the blankets around him as a particularly violent bout of shivering rattled his frame, “but it is not any ordinary human illness. No one here is exposed to it by my presence, I believe.”

Not bothering to hide her misgiving, Liandra inquired, “Halbarad and Jakob guaranteed me this morning, before you arrived, that they still had no plausible guesses as to the cause of the events here in our village, and yet, you claim some knowledge? Up until today, I have believed this to be a mere disease, but Jakob and the Elf you brought with you are even now outside, searching for some unknown being you all apparently believe to have caused this. What are you Rangers not telling me?”

As much as he didn’t wish to repeat for the herbalist the story of how Legolas had seen the Adan girl child’s haunt on their way here, Aragorn had full faith in Halbarad’s instincts to trust this woman, and he also wanted her compliance and acceptance so that the villagers would remain on the Rangers’ side, even should their first attempts to rid the village of the haunt prove unsuccessful – or deadly. And so, after some thought and unintentional dithering, Aragorn replied, “Some knowledge, yes, I suppose, although to be truthful, I have no better answers than anyone else. The Elf who came with me, Legolas, has seen something that might explain the strangeness of the events in your village.

Realizing that she would have her answers, and with her demeanor reminding Aragorn of his father even more as she absently stroked the underside of her chin, Liandra prompted the Ranger, “And you say this is no ordinary illness? What did this Elf see?”

He scooted back upon the cot to place his blanketed back against the plank boards of the wall, reclined against it, and then set about telling Liandra what he, Halbarad, Jakob, and Legolas knew.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The night sky overhead was clear of all but the faintest, straggliest of clouds, while the vibrancy of the stars were subdued by the strangely luminous quality of a sickle-shaped moon. With the setting of the sun, the bizarre balminess of the late autumn day was now becoming more algid, as was normal for the time of year. The houses they passed were shut up tightly, with only the barest slivers of light escaping to show that anyone was within the homes. Legolas could hear how the people of the village were going about their lives as best they could, and thus in some houses they passed the people were laughing and singing, arguing and shouting in other houses, while a few were eerily quiet save for the crying of children or the occasional thud of someone throwing a log into the fire. Smells of dinners cooking, of smoke trailing from the many chimneys, and the acridly unmistakable scent of burning tallow candles and oil lamps all fought for supremacy in the night air.  It was a pleasant night, or might have been, had not Legolas and Jakob been on a dire quest with Aragorn shivering to death – quite literally – back in the schoolhouse.

With Jakob just a few steps in front of Legolas, the two walked the predetermined path the Rangers had earlier decided upon for this excursion. They had only been about their walk for less than an hour, but already, Legolas was weary of this task. Try though he did to keep watch over Jakob as well as his surroundings, the Elf was distracted by wondering what was occurring in the schoolhouse, if Aragorn were well, and if the distinct feeling he had of being watched was the Adan child’s haunt or from the myriad villagers who he felt might be peeking from between the slats of their shutters of their well-lit homes and into the darkness where the Elf and Ranger searched.

 _I should apologize to him,_ the Prince thought of Jakob, who had been quiet from the start of their walk. He wasn’t sure if it was their circumstances or what had happened between them earlier that was the cause of the man’s silence, but even though Legolas had not known Jakob but for a day, it seemed uncharacteristic of the Ranger to be so hushed. His guilt in overreacting to Jakob’s friendly touch was nearly as distracting as his worry for Estel, and so he decided to wait no longer to be rid of it.

“Jakob,” the Elf murmured, which drew the man’s attention at once. Jakob turned around to the Elf, which is when Legolas saw how the fiery haired Adan’s normally lively face was drawn and serious with the import of their task – and thus, not from some grudge over the misunderstanding between them. Still, the Prince needed to clear the air. He cast his gaze around them as he had done constantly over the last hour, checking for danger, ere he told Jakob, “I apologize for earlier. Estel’s sickness and the odd events in this village have put me on edge, and then I did not notice your approach and was startled. It is no excuse for my poor behavior, but I apologize.”

Suddenly, Jakob grinned and the Elf knew in that moment that all was completely forgiven. In fact, Legolas found himself smiling back at so blatantly innocuous a grin. “I should have known better than to try to sneak up on an Elf. Think nothing of it. If you had startled me under similar circumstances, I would have reacted the same. Although,” the Ranger told the Elf, his smile growing into a short chuckle, “as quick as you move, I doubt I could have had my dagger at your throat as you did yours to mine.”

With that, Jakob began ambling forward again, Legolas a vigilant few steps behind him. He breathed a little easier knowing that the tension between him and the Ranger was dissolved. Now, he had only his overwhelming fear for Estel and the unmistakably strange feeling of being watched over which to ponder. Thinking to bring it up to Jakob subtly so as not to admit outright that he thought the haunt might be near, Legolas instead mentioned offhandedly, “We should have told the villagers to stay away from their windows. I believe I can feel their eyes upon us.”

Whirling back around to face the Elf, his smile again absent from his face, a once more serious Jakob wondered, “Can you? When first Halbarad suggested for them to keep their homes lit with fires and lamps, he told them to stay away from the doors and windows, and again tonight, I reminded them of the same. One of the villagers died after sticking her head out an open window one night, calling to a neighbor in the next house to pass over some butter or something mundane like that. Her family didn’t see her die, but dead she was. After word got around, it frightened the rest of the people here into believing Halbarad’s decree to avoid opening their doors, windows, and shutters at night, so I would be surprised to hear that they are watching us, my friend.”

He didn’t want to worry Jakob, since he believed that the man would not be able to see or feel the haunt, even should she be right behind Jakob to grab him, so Legolas didn’t want for the Adan to become paranoid and lose his concentration. The Silvan’s subtlety had worked, though, for Jakob supplied to the Elf the very information he had hoped to learn, though it did not satisfy Legolas. Instead, a prickling sensation crawled up the laegel’s back and the hair upon his nape and his arms rose in gooseflesh. He considered that even if told to refrain from peeping out of their homes, the Edain could still be doing it and thus causing the Elf’s sense of being watched, but Legolas was suddenly convinced it was not the humans after all.

 _It is her or one of the same of her kind, whatever she or they might be,_ he felt, the certainty of this now absolute. Reflexively gripping his unlit torch all the more tightly, the Prince lifted his closed lantern, his fingers upon the small latch to be at ready to lift it. _If she came near, would I see her? I felt her nearly every night for weeks at the lake without ever seeing her, but was that because I never came across her or because she merely did not want to be seen? Could she be standing beside Jakob or me even now?_

The Prince’s reaction to Jakob’s statement and his sudden abstracted concentration gave him away to the Ranger, it seemed, for Jakob watched Legolas prepare his makeshift weapons with mounting concern. In response, the Ranger did the same with his own torch and lantern, though he queried, “Do you see something? Or do you sense something?”

Since he hadn’t been present when Halbarad told Jakob of what Legolas and Estel had told Halbarad, the Prince wasn’t sure if he needed to explain himself fully, but took the chance in simply stating, “We are being watched. I hoped perhaps that the villagers might be the cause, but I think it is merely wishful thinking. It is her. The girl is near.”

Apparently, Halbarad had told Jakob everything concerning Legolas and Estel’s trip to the settlement, for the young Ranger did not question what the Elf meant or the Elf’s ability to sense the specter’s presence. He admitted as much, telling the Silvan, “Halbarad told me that you could feel her nearness, but said you weren’t sure if you would tonight. I don’t know whether to be glad you can sense her presence or terrified that you feel her now.”

“How about both?” the Elf replied at once with unintended, pithy sarcasm.

When Jakob cackled loudly, his cachinnations broke the deathly silence of the village around them so completely that the Elf nearly jumped from his skin. Stepping forward, Jakob lifted a hand as if to clap the Prince on the shoulder, but with a teasingly wry grin, he thought better of laying a hand upon the Elf again and instead opted to reply, “Well said, Master Elf. Come, let us keep going and get this done.”

Gladly, Legolas followed in behind the Ranger for a while longer, losing his way in the winding paths of the unfamiliar village, where every house and yard appeared the same in the dark. Apparently having been ciphering their situation, Jakob paused again, turned back to Legolas, and then wondered aloud to the Elf, “The thing that I don’t understand is this: if it is this ghost you’ve seen, what is she? Why is she doing this? Moreover, I cannot fathom why – assuming she is the one who has caused the deaths in the village, that is – that her touch did not kill Aragorn. Good that it didn’t, I mean, of course,” Jakob added hurriedly to his speculation, “but why was Aragorn spared when everyone else died instantly?”

“Nor can I understand it. I tried to pull him away before she touched him, so perhaps I did what no one had been able to do because no one else can see her – perhaps I pulled him away before her work was done, or perhaps she only barely touched him. I do not know, nor do I like not knowing.” The Elf fiddled with the latch on the lantern, his gaze ever upon their surroundings, though he took a moment to look pointedly at the young Ranger as he fervently declared, “But it gives me time, at least. Whatever is the cause of his sickness, it is not natural, and I will find some way to end it, to cure him.”

A hard and knowing look came over the typically effervescent Ranger’s face, which stole the Prince’s attention from his task of keeping them safe, and he wondered what had Jakob so adamantly grave. He soon found out when Jakob swore, “Us, Legolas. Or we, rather. We will find some way to end his sickness. I owe Aragorn my pitiful life. He saved my hide years ago from the hangman’s noose, offering me instead a chance to join the Dúnedain in their cause to protect the free folk of Eriador, and I took that offer rather than hang. But time and time again, he saved me in battle at the risk of his own life and with his good counsel. If with my life I can repay the years I have lived because of his intervention, then I will die happily. We will find some way to save him, and these people,” the young Ranger declared with as much fervency as Legolas felt.  

Estel had never spoken of Jakob to Legolas, so he did not know the backstory behind how Jakob had joined the ranks of the Rangers, but he soon found this out, also, for seeing the Elf’s curious gaze, Jakob once again smiled brilliantly and told Legolas, “To be honest, I am not descended from the Númenóreans, as are the Rangers, so I guess I’m more a nominal Ranger. I am from Gondor, where I used to be a thief. I was caught stealing horses along the border of Rohan, where the penalty is always the hangman’s noose. Luckily for me, Aragorn was merely passing through on a task from Imladris, and he convinced the owner to spare me, telling the horse lord that he and I would work on his horse farm for a few weeks to repay the damage I caused his fences and stable. And he did. Why I have never figured out, but Aragorn taught me more about friendship and honor in those three weeks than I had ever learnt in my whole life.”

“I did not know this. It sounds like something Estel would do,” he told Jakob, returning the man’s smile with one of his own, one that evinced his immeasurable love and affection for Aragorn without his even knowing it. “I owe him my life, as well, Jakob, and I will give my own life for his without hesitation.”

They stood in the silence of the village’s road for a few moments, esteeming the other with new regard. Legolas felt even more shame for his earlier actions, when he had nearly slit this man’s throat because of the uncontrollable anxiety and fear he had felt to be touched by Jakob. This time, the friendly man did not hesitate when he lifted a hand and placed it upon the Elf’s upper arm in friendly comity.

“Come, let us continue on. If we don’t return soon, both Halbarad and Aragorn will be out looking for us,” Jakob complained good naturedly as he whirled on heel to face front again. The Ranger began walking, remembering to keep slightly off to the side of Legolas so that the Elf could keep watch in front of them for any vile presence. “Besides,” the man began, but did not finish, for a shrill scream suddenly pierced the silence of the tranquil village.

Both Elf and Ranger stopped dead in their tracks, with Legolas looking about them for any danger, though Jakob was listening intently to try to pinpoint the location from which the scream was coming. Without consulting with Legolas, Jakob took off at a sprint, veering off their set course. At once, Legolas was sprinting along behind him, the lantern and unlit torch swinging in his hand as he caught up to Jakob. Vaguely, the Elf recalled Aragorn’s admonishment not to go running after Jakob into danger, and here he was, doing that very thing. Not that remembering this stopped the Elf; he would protect the Ranger as best he could and try to aid whoever was shrieking.

“Wait, Jakob,” he tried to call to the human, to slow him at least so that they could consider some strategy rather than sprinting headlong into death.

Legolas did not like this, but he was not leaving Jakob to chase after the cause of the scream on his own. And since Jakob did not slow to make a plan, the Elf ran foolhardily behind him, not once thinking that he or the Ranger ought to light their torches to be at ready for what they might find. They were now off the course they had predetermined. There were no extra, oiled, unlit torches lining this path upon which they now jogged, no armed men awaiting Jakob’s call for aid, and they had no idea what they would find. Whether from Legolas’ call to wait or to listen again to gain his bearings upon the person screaming, Jakob momentarily slowed to a trot.

“It is coming from that house,” the young Ranger exclaimed, his quick pace renewing to run at his full speed towards from where he thought the yelling originated.

Back from the main road, along a trampled dirt path lined with dormant but cultivated briars wrapped around latticing, and surrounded by equally leaf-barren and hibernating apple trees, sat a small cottage constructed entirely of logs, its roof shingles rather than thatch like the rest of the village’s homes. As they ran closer to the house, the unending, piercing screeches grew ever louder, pausing only the second it took for the woman who was screaming to breathe ere she began again. To Legolas, it sounded as if the shrieking woman was not in physical pain or fear, but keening the lamenting wails of someone who had just witnessed the death of a loved one. He would soon be proven right.

Jakob didn’t climb a single step, but jumped from the path to the porch with a single, great leap, and soon had the door’s handle in hand. A cold wind whipped the Elf’s hair away from his face. He didn’t need much light to see, of course, since he was an Elf, but the scant light from Ithil was blocked by all the trees surrounding the house and the slanted roof over the porch. Had it not been for the fiery glint of Jakob’s hair, Legolas would have run right into the Adan during his own bound onto the stoop.

Jakob sat his lantern and torch upon the porch to beat upon the door, calling out, “It is Jakob, the Ranger. Let me in.”

The screaming did not halt; the Elf did not hear any movement from inside nor any footsteps to indicate that someone was coming to do as Jakob bid. The Ranger began to beat his shoulder against the sturdy portal to try to break it down. “Let us help you!” the man called out to the people inside the cottage. “Unlock your door!”

Having had enough of Jakob’s ineffectual attempts to gain entrance, Legolas ordered, “Get back.”

Jakob nearly didn’t make it out of the way in time; drawing back a single powerful, lean leg, the Prince kicked out, his foot smashed into the door just under its handle, and he stumbled forward with the momentum. The simple latch keeping them out broke with a splintering crash, giving way easily under the Elf’s mighty kick, while the door swung open violently. The Silvan righted himself just as Jakob pushed past Legolas to enter, the Adan’s need to aid the woman inside making him forget his torch and lantern upon the porch, though the Elf still had his in hand when he entered just a step behind the Ranger.

The house was lit up as if the sun resided solely within the cottage. The fireplace was roaring, casting off a steady, orange illumination, though there were candles and lamps placed strategically in all corners of the home, as well, such that there was nowhere for shadows to linger. Desperately, Legolas looked around them, thinking, _We were wrong, she does not fear light. She is here; I can feel her as plainly as I did by the creek when I faced her._

And yet, he did not see the haunt. Other than Jakob, who was running towards the group of people standing in the middle of the single room that was the cottage’s lower floor, a wailing woman and two children stood huddled together, facing the back of the home, where the door to their backyard was wide open. Jakob grabbed hold of the nearest child and pushed him towards the fireplace, where he stumbled to a stop just before falling against a chair in front of the hearth. The Ranger then grabbed the girl and pushed her towards her brother in an attempt to get them as far away as possible from the open back door. Although all of this took only seconds, to Legolas, it seemed that he swam in thick water, as if he were caught in a bog and his arms and legs unable to move freely, which made him all the more glad that Jakob was here, for he was acting quickly and surely to safeguard the children.

By the time the Silvan walked to where the mother stood, her fingernails clawing at her face as her grief controlled her mind entirely, Jakob was shaking the Adan woman roughly to rouse her, asking, “Calm yourself, woman. What is it? What is wrong?”

Legolas did not wait to hear her answer, though as he walked to the open back door, he heard two very distinct things – first, he heard the woman’s daughter say in a voice blank with shock, “Daddy went to get the dog;” and then, he heard the dog itself barking. Just beyond the ambient light spilling from the house onto the stoop that led down into the family’s backyard, a man laid upon the ground. The yelping dog stood beside him, the fur upon his neck and back standing up straight, his forelegs bent and his head low, his tail sticking straight out behind him. The Elf stopped just short of walking outside and conjectured distractedly of the still man on the ground, _Is there any use in bringing him inside… or is he dead?_

Legolas followed the dog’s line of sight to try to ascertain at what he barked and growled. Behind the house was the family’s orchard, where rows of trimmed and well-kept fruit trees grew for as far as the Elf could see in such dimness. The Elf could hear as Jakob tried to find out what happened, his attempts to calm the woman seemingly useless, even though the Ranger implored the woman to quiet by telling her that she needed to go to her children to comfort them, to keep them safe. The mother was apparently too caught in grief even to notice Jakob, for her keening did not stop, though her daughter once again tried to answer Jakob, telling him nearly inaudibly over her mother’s din of wailing, “Daddy went to get the dog and fell down.”

He lifted his lantern and opened the shutter facing outwards, while holding his torch near it. _Be at ready,_ he advised himself. _Be at ready. I can feel you,_ he thought as if speaking to the girl haunt that he knew was near. _I know you are here somewhere._

“Legolas, what are you doing?” he heard Jakob ask frantically from behind him, as the Ranger had only just now realized that the Elf was going outside, but by this time, the Silvan was stepping beyond the doorframe of the back entrance and out into the dim angle of light cast by the illumination inside the house.

Displaying more courage than he truly felt, Legolas calmly walked off the stoop, stopping just where the man’s feet laid and the dog stood. Feeling the presence of someone behind him, the dog yipped and spun around, gnashing its teeth at the Wood-Elf, who did not even spare the canine a glance, for his gaze was upon where the dog had just been looking. Unsurprisingly to the Silvan, the poor dog had had enough and given up on trying to protect its master; with another yip of fear, it tucked its tail between its legs and ran towards the house’s open back door.

“Morgoth’s ass, Legolas, come back inside and shut the door,” Jakob called to him, trying vainly to be heard over the shrieking woman. “What do you think you are doing?”

While the Elf heard the Ranger, he did not pause. Instead, he took a few steps farther outwards, mumbling, “I have to see it. I have to know if it is her.”

Of course, Jakob could not hear the Prince over the mother’s shrieks, and so came to the door himself, calling out once again in a voice evincing both his fear and his irritation for the Elf, “By Ilúvatar, you fool, get back in here.”

Finally, Legolas found for what he was looking. A fence demarcated the grassy yard from the first of the orchard’s trees – it was at the gate to this fence that he found her. The girl haunt stood in her makeshift, coarse dress, her arms and legs bare, her feet shoeless, and her pale hair unbound – just as she had been the last time he had seen her and just as her corpse had looked, though her specter was without decay or ravaging of carrion birds.

This time, however, the girl’s haunt was not alone.

_Sweet Varda, who is that beside her?_

Standing beside her but facing the girl rather than Legolas was a taller specter, his dark clothing plain and worn, his wavy, shoulder length hair brown but graying, and a long but kempt beard upon his wizened face. The Elf stooped ever so slowly, with exaggerated care, until he knelt beside the dead man’s body, and without removing his gaze from the two haunts a stone’s throw away, he settled his lantern on the ground, keeping the oiled end of his torch near the open shutter, while he felt for the dead Adan’s arm.

 _Cold. Cold and lifeless. He is dead._ A sudden thought occurred to him, _Is that him? Is the new haunt this man lying beside me?_

Using his free hand to turn the man’s body over slightly, Legolas recklessly looked down to where the corpse lay at his knees. It took but a moment for him to see that the dead Adan beside him was the same as the haunt standing beside the girl; a mere moment, a split second of his negligence was all it took. When the Elf realized his inattention and hurriedly glanced back up, the girl child’s specter stood right before him, one of her diaphanous hands mere inches from his nose, while her other hand held tightly to the hand of the dead man’s ghost, who stood just behind her.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are literally only four people reading this dumb story; honestly, I keep posting chapters just for you four ... Mcapps, Mirkwood, Woowoochow, and now also Silmarilli. Seriously, if ya'll stop reading, there is no point in my posting anything anymore. So for you four lovely people, enjoy and thanks so much for your constant and continual support. You four keep me going. If for some reason ya'll quit reading, I am quitting writing, my dears. :)

Aragorn could not sit in the ensconcement any longer. He believed that Legolas and Jakob had left less than half an hour ago, though without being able to go outside to see where the moon sat in the sky, the human could only guess this. His short conversation with Liandra had gone better than he had expected – that is to say, when he had started his tale, the Ranger had held no hope that she would believe him when he told her what had transpired prior to his and Legolas’ arrival in the village. Since Liandra gave his story credence, Aragorn considered his telling of it a success.

In the end, Liandra had offered up what information she had, starting with the little girl’s name – Elise. To put a name to the corpse and the haunt had seemed trivial to Aragorn at first, until Liandra had inquired as to whether they had spoken to the girl’s family beyond her deceased mother, father, brother, and grandfather. Neither Legolas nor any of the Rangers had thought to inquire about the girl herself, as Aragorn now realized they should have thought to do. Of course, it was unsurprising for Liandra to know the family in the farmhouse and the little blonde girl whose specter Legolas saw, since she had seen, treated, and helped to birth nearly if not all people residing in the village. Thus, the best advice and aid Liandra could give was to help put them in touch with the extended family of Elise, most of whom lived here in the village rather than on the outskirts as Elise’s immediate family had done. From them, Liandra thought that they might learn more of Elise, such as why her soul remained on Arda rather than moving on to the Halls of Awaiting.

But it was now after sunset and speaking to the family would have to wait until the morrow, so for the time being, there was nothing else that either Liandra or Aragorn could do. Tomorrow, though, with Liandra, Estel and Halbarad, Jakob, or Legolas would find Elise’s family to question them. If this would prove fruitful was doubtful to the Adan, but so far, other than waiting for his father to send advice, it was the only other means of gaining information that they had.

 _If it is even the girl,_ he contemplated wearily as he began to pace back and forth in front of the small cot in the hidden area behind the bookcases. _As much as I hope Legolas and Jakob do not encounter any trouble tonight, they are right in that it would prove most helpful for us to know if it is the girl – Elise – who is doing this. Perhaps then, after questioning her kin, we may have enough information to end her terrorizing of the villagers when Ada’s assistance arrives._

In Imladris, during the colder months, the Elves sometimes took fresh snow from the higher elevations or sometimes in the valley itself and flavored it with fruit mash or mint to make a frozen dessert for their winter solstice festival. Once, when eating this as a child, Estel had consumed the sweet treat too quickly and earned himself a shooting ache that had run through his head as if someone had driven a frigid spike into his skull. The Ranger felt the same at this very moment, except the agonizing, lancing pain did not fade as it had when a child eating his frosty fruit ice too voraciously.

 _Please come back, Greenleaf,_ he fretted, his hand worrying at his aching forehead as he staggered back and forth, making tight turns upon his heels in the scant space before the bed. _Please come back safe and well. And ready to climb into bed,_ he added with a self-deprecatory smile for himself, since though he wanted most for Legolas to return safely, Aragorn wanted also to be warm for a while. The human knew that if only he could climb into bed and huddle under the blankets with his warm Elven lover, the pain in his head would end, as would his incessant, bothersome shivering.

Deciding he would rather at least be cold with the women and children rather than cold and alone, Estel shed the many blankets draped around his shoulders, laid them on the bed, and walked unsteadily into the main room. Although the women were still awake and speaking amongst themselves, most of the younger children were now asleep, save for the little boy, Nat, who had earlier tried to climb the Ranger like a tree. Pallets and bedrolls were spread out in disorderly fashion near to the hearth; just like Halbarad had told Estel earlier, the women and their children were gathered like wolf pups in the den, clustered together against the cold chill of the night.

At Estel’s approach, the older woman whom Halbarad had called ‘mother’ rose from her rocking chair, which she then offered to Aragorn, saying, “I’m too old to sit up any longer, young man. You can sit here.”

Being that the rocker was situated right before the blazingly warm fireplace, the Adan accepted the offer gladly and gave her thanks. She hobbled off a bit to where her own pallet laid – a down mattress rather than one of straw as were most of the other women’s beds – and used the wall to balance herself as she tried to kneel to get onto her bed. Seeing her tottering struggle, Aragorn immediately stood and went to her, silently offering the elderly woman aid by supporting her as she got down into her bed. With her clouded over, unseeing eyes, she smiled at Estel and thanked him, now, as he helped to spread her blankets over her.

When he turned around to return to the rocking chair, he noted that all of the remaining women were watching him with thankfulness, his kindness to one who was nothing but an elderly stranger to him earning him the respect of these villagers. When he relaxed once more into the rocking chair, Liandra suddenly appeared before him with the many blankets he had left on the cot in the back of the room; she spread them over him just as he had spread the coverlets over the old woman, tutting at him in motherly aggravation, “Mustn’t get too cold when you are sick, else you won’t be able to warm back up.”

“Thank you,” he told the herbalist and gladly pulled the blankets tighter around him to keep in his deficient body warmth.

“You’re welcome,” she told him gruffly ere she moved back to her own bed along the outer ring of pallets.

“Are you sick?” came a young and fragile sounding voice. He saw that it was Renetta, the mother of Nat, who had asked him this. Renetta sat upon her thin straw mattress with Nat, who was busy trying to unravel the lacings across the bodice of her dress, as if seeking the breast underneath for his dinner. She offered to Estel, “I can make you some tea, if you like. The water is still warm, and if not, I can boil some more.”

“Or there is still some soup and bread left. I can heat some up for you,” another woman offered, one to whom Aragorn had not yet been introduced.

“Are you warm enough? I have an extra blanket you can borrow,” the elderly blind woman piped up to say, though she then added sternly in warning, “but only to borrow. I must have it back.”

An odd swell of emotion rose in the Adan’s chest. These villagers had only met him properly tonight, but already, they were treating him like one of their own – and not because he was someone of any importance, had coin that they desired, or because it was expected of them. No, they were generous because it was their way. He swallowed thickly, his words sticking in his throat as he tried to express his gratefulness without showing how much their compassion had touched him. “No, but thank you… all of you. I am fine, I promise. It is merely a chill,” he fibbed innocently.

From across the room, Halbarad gave Estel a wide and knowing smile, making Aragorn think that Halbarad had been on the receiving end of these gentlefolk’s hospitality, as well, and perhaps that he was glad not to be the center of their cossetting attention. Having offered all they could to Aragorn, the women resumed their conversations and congenially passed the time together with knitting, sewing, and the like, while sharing stories, gossip, and advice with each other. The pleasantness of their idle chatter made the man feel restful and glad that he had come back to the main room rather than stay in the ensconcement by himself.

_Where is Greenleaf now, I wonder?_

The Ranger had come through this village years ago, but had not spoken with anyone except the blacksmith to have his horse shoed and a merchant to buy supplies. He was not familiar with the settlement’s roads or houses, and so even had he some idea of what route Legolas and Jakob had chosen to take, Aragorn still would have had no notion as to where they now ought to be, although from Halbarad’s earlier prediction that their route would only take about an hour to walk, he thought the two ought to be returning shortly. He closed his eyes and rubbed them, for they ached as they might if he had spent too long reading in dim light.

_Hurry back, Greenleaf. I truly don’t wish to come out to search for you, but I will. You must know that I will._

A small hand fumbled at his leg where it stuck out from under the edge of the blankets, tugging at the cloth of his trousers and startling him into opening his eyes. The adventurous little boy named Nat was once again trying to climb the Ranger. His eyes drooping and his bottom lip pouty, the child looked like he needed to be put to bed. Unsure of what to do, since he was still wary of passing on his unnatural sickness to anyone else and more so to a child, Aragorn only watched passively as Nat adroitly climbed his leg and scrambled into his lap.

“Nat,” his mother chastised the little boy softly as she stood from her mat to retrieve her wayward son. “Come back here and lay down. You mustn’t bother the Ranger.”

However, when Renetta tried to pick up her child from where he had sat himself upon Aragorn’s lap, Nat began to squall, which caused Renetta to remove her hold of him so that he would quiet and not wake every other child in the room. To Estel’s amusement, the boy stopped crying the second his mother let go of him; he crawled closer to the Ranger, sitting sideways upon the man’s lap, and laid his dark head down upon the man’s chest, drowsily popping his chafed and reddened thumb into his mouth as he did so. Grouchily, he slurred to his mother, “Wanna rock.”

Her hands on her hips, Renetta again said her child’s name in the same lovingly irritated tone Estel had heard countless times when younger, and sometimes when older, as well, when his foster father, brothers, and maybe even Legolas had reproved him for causing grief. “Nat. Stop making a fuss and come back to your own bed.”

Aragorn could not help but to smile when Nat fiercely, exaggeratedly shook his head in negation, mumbling more loudly, “No, momma! Wanna rock.”

 _Surely it will not hurt him to sit in my lap for a while,_ the Ranger considered, and then told the young mother, “It’s no bother. He can sit here with me.”

Renetta looked to her child with exasperation at being ignored, but then to Estel with pleasure that he was willing to take the time to comfort her sleepy child. “If you are sure it is alright. If he gets too heavy or too pestersome, I will take him back from you. Just say so.”

“He will be fine.” Taking off the topmost blanket, Aragorn wrapped it around the little boy to keep him warm, but also to keep himself from coming into accidental contact with the toddler. The now content Nat snuggled closer to Estel, who wrapped his arms around the boy and felt all the better for having the innocent and adorable child in his lap. As he began to rock, he once again reassured Renetta, “It looks like it won’t be long before he falls asleep, anyhow. Climbing trees has worn him out today, I gather. When he falls asleep, I will let you know.”

Renetta gave the Ranger the sweetest, gentlest smile the man had ever received from anyone. Bewildered, the Adan saw that the mother’s eyes were moist with tears. She nodded but did not speak, and then moved back to her pallet. Around them, the women had all grown quiet to watch the short interaction between the Ranger and one of their own, their eyes judgmental; however, in their judgment, they had found nothing wanting in the man.

Just when the women were about to resume their conversations, Renetta asked politely of Estel, “Is your family from Bree, like Halbarad’s family is?”

Not desirous to tell the villagers too much, but not wanting to appear unfriendly, Aragorn admitted, “My family is from the south, though I did not know them well. I was orphaned as a child and was raised in Rivendell amongst the Elves.”

He realized his mistake when the villagers again quieted to observe him and listen to the conversation Renetta had started. _I’m guessing I’ve opened the door to a whole slew of questions now. Maybe I should have lied,_ he regretted with a wry inner smile and a slight shake of his head, though in truth, he did not mind to speak to these kind women. In false ruefulness, he told himself, _I’ve piqued their interest now. They will likely want to know everything!_

“The Elves? You grew up with the Elves? How exciting,” Renetta exclaimed, the sewing in her hands forgotten as she found greater interest in Aragorn. She inquired rivetedly, “Is the Elf with you from Rivendell, too? What is his name?”

He couldn’t blame the villagers for being bored and wanting some entertainment through interrogating him, for strangers were likely few and far between in this village, where elsewise everyone knew each other and little excitement normally occurred. Still, Aragorn looked to Halbarad as if the older Ranger might aid him in deflecting the many questions that were sure to follow, but Halbarad was engrossed in whetting his broadsword – or so he pretended. Again, Aragorn found himself shaking his head at the absurdity of being the center of attention, when normally, as a Ranger, he was usually hiding in the shadows. If a Goblin strung him up and flogged him to try to extract answers, Estel could have kept his silence, but all it took was a few well-intentioned queries from a gaggle of benevolent women and he found himself helpless but to answer.

As he thought of how to reply without inciting further scrutinous questions, Aragorn looked down to the child he held. Firelight danced across Nat’s ruddy, chubby features; he made gentle popping sounds as he sucked on his thumb – a thumb that had already spent too much time being used to pacify Nat’s need for the comfort of the breast, as his poor digit was badly abraded. Deciding that humoring the woman’s questions would do no harm, he finally looked up to Renetta and answered, “He is from Mirkwood, across the Misty Mountains. His name is Legolas.”

Another of the women gasped dramatically. She, too, ceased her knitting and joined in the conversation, telling them all, “My husband’s family was from Lake-town, on the edge of Mirkwood. They used to tell me that the Wood-Elves were violent warriors, who never worked or tilled the land, but spent all their time feasting and hunting. Even their women would fight and drink, just like the men!”

Aragorn laughed heartily in appreciation of the woman’s description, which was truthful except in its simplicity. “They do like to celebrate with food and drink, that is true, but it is because they live hard lives and take what joy they can. Mirkwood is a savage forest, where danger lurks in every tree bough from spiders and within every shadow from Orcs. They do not till the land, no; they gather what they need from the forest and supplement the rest by trading with the merchants in Lake-town, for their King has great wealth to take care of his people, and is much loved by them. And as for the Ellith, they are every bit as strong and capable fighters as are the Ellyn, so yes, they do fight and feast with as much fervor as their male counterparts, but the same is true in Imladris and Lothlórien, as well,” he explained patiently, expecting the villagers to take exception to this, since amongst the Edain, women fighting and feasting like men was typically frowned upon, though not unheard of.

Indeed, a wave of discontented murmurs ran through the women as they whispered to each other about this bit of news; Aragorn could not hear all that was said, but he did catch that a couple of the women were pleased to learn this, while most were scandalized.

“We are lucky to have an Elf here to aid us,” the blind woman chastised the group of villagers, sounding as if she thought they were being ungrateful by their impolite description of the Silvan and their reaction to Aragorn’s elucidation. Indignantly, she scolded her youngers, “Not many of the Eldar would fuss over a bunch of Edain, such as us. Well,” she amended, “except for Lord Elrond and his people in Rivendell. They were the ones who sent us grain and dried meat twenty summers ago, when the drought struck us and we would have starved, but most of you are too young to remember. So take care of how you speak of the Elves; else, we may lose the Elf’s help.”

To Estel’s amusement – though he hid it from the villagers around him – the women did appear rebuked by the elderly blind woman’s admonishment. Not wanting to admit that Legolas could see the possible source of their dilemma since for inexplicable reasons the Prince now could apparently see haunts, and not wanting to disclose that it was only chance that he and Legolas were here at all anyway, Estel softened the blow of the elderly woman’s words by assuring the others vaguely, “She is right in that we are all very lucky to have Legolas here. More lucky than you know. But do not fear that you will upset him and drive him away. He is outside even now, risking his life with Jakob to find the cause for the deaths here. He will not be so easily deterred from his desire to be of aid to the gentlefolk of your settlement, I promise you.”

For a short while, there was silence in the schoolhouse, with only the occasional snore from one of the young ones and the crackles and pops of the fire in the hearth. Just when the Ranger’s thoughts turned back to Legolas and where he could be, the women began again with their questions.

“Do you have any children?” one of the women asked him.

Who it was that asked him this, he did not know, since he did not know most of their names. However, he could see that the woman was the mother of the child who Liandra had treated for croup. He was pleased to see that she was following Liandra’s advice. The herbalist had told the mother earlier to give her son the breast as often as he would take it so that he would remain nourished, despite that with his coughing he was unable to nurse as well as he might otherwise have done. Even now, the sick child dribbled and gagged a bit as he nursed, but was not coughing as much as before, at least.

“No, I do not have any children.” The Ranger was polite but kept his answer short in hopes of not being pulled into their conversation any further.

Of course, the villagers were not so easily denied. Another of the women asked Aragorn, “Are you married, then?”

_I suppose Legolas and I are as married as any two people can be, although not as two Edain would be, nor as two of the Eldar would be, and not even as a woman and man might be._

The thought made him smile, which did not go unnoticed by his audience of curious onlookers. He adjusted his hold upon Nat, who wriggled a bit in his arms but settled almost immediately afterwards. Estel responded succinctly, “No, I am not married. Being a Ranger means living in the forest, travelling far and wide, and constantly putting oneself in danger. Not many are willing to put up with a man who doesn’t come home often.”

“That’s a shame. You seem like a fine man,” the elder, nearly blind woman stated from where she laid with her eyes closed and the blankets pulled nearly over her head.

Sitting cross-legged on her bedroll with a pair of shears in hand that she used to cut a pattern out of a bolt of dyed linen cloth, one of the younger women who was childless and innocent blushed prettily as she spoke by asking of Estel, “What about that Elf with you? Legolas, did you say his name was? Is he married?”

Around the Ranger, all of the women broke out into laughter at the young girl’s forwardness, for clearly she had seen Legolas and recognized how beautiful a specimen of manhood the Wood-Elf truly was. Estel agreed, of course, but couldn’t claim the Prince as his own – not even to this group of women who thus far had been nothing but kind to him. He found himself laughing right along with the others, though a spark of possessiveness flared in his chest. He held no misgiving that the Silvan Prince was his, just as he belonged to Legolas, but he did not want for any of these women to try to vie for the Wood-Elf’s attention in thinking they might capture Legolas’ interest. He did not doubt that any woman who flirted with the Elf would be rebuffed firmly but gently by Legolas; yet, Aragorn did not like the mere thought of any of them trying.

So, he offered as a means to dissuade the pretty young girl – or any of the others, for that matter – by saying, “Yes, his name is Legolas. And no, he is not married. Nor is he likely to get married, I’m afraid. He has chosen a life as a warrior, forsaking having a family to protect his homeland.”

 _That’s not entirely a lie,_ he wryly told himself. The only really mendacious bit had been his saying that Legolas had forsaken family. Only because he had chosen a male mate had the Elf abandoned the idea of having a family of his own; well, other than the Elvenking, that is, but he hardly counted, in Estel’s thinking. He looked down to the toddler in his arms, suddenly wondering something that had never occurred to him before, _Did Greenleaf ever desire to have children?_ The sudden image of Legolas as a father came to him, of the Prince caring for and loving a babe. Aragorn’s chest ached with the sweet imagining of a young, beautiful, blond and blue-eyed Elfling who looked just like Legolas, and one who might grow to be as kind and sharp of mind; however, such a thing would never happen now, nor would Estel ever have a child, it seemed, though he worried less for his own desire for family than he did for Legolas’ desire to have one, as he felt that he had long since given up the dream of children when years ago he chose to become a Ranger. Unbidden and unwelcome, the Ranger abruptly feared, _Has our choosing to be together robbed Greenleaf of the hopes of having an Elfling of his own?_

Another question drew him from his somber and gloomy pondering. Sitting cross-legged on her bedroll, Liandra was taking stock of the herbs in her satchel, some of which she had been given by Estel after their conversation in the ensconcement a short while ago. The herbalist asked the Ranger, “Do you think Lord Elrond will help us?”

Having told the villager’s healer about how it was only chance for Legolas and him even to be here, Aragorn had thus already admitted to Liandra that neither he nor Legolas knew what to do about the strange situation here in the village. Estel was glad that she did not mention this to the others. To assure all the women, not just Liandra, Aragorn promised, “He will help.”

Counting in a mumble the rolls of bandaging she had, Liandra paused to say in what nearly sounded like an accusation, “You sound very sure of this.”

“I know Lord Elrond well. Trust me. He will send his sons, perhaps, or at least one of his advisors, though I doubt he will come himself. But his sons or advisors will have whatever knowledge he possesses on the matter, and they will come with all haste. I am sure of it, yes,” he replied. Aragorn looked around him to see that several of the women began murmuring to each other, though Estel could not catch the content of their discussions. He could only pray that Liandra’s cynical question did not cause for the villagers to panic in thinking that there only hope thus far would prove to be false – that is, that Halbarad’s guarantee for the Eldar’s assistance would be for naught.

The women were not discussing the possibility of being left to their own devices in solving their settlement’s problem, though, but were still fixated upon Aragorn, it seemed, for Renetta soon asked the question that the women had been discussing in whispers amongst themselves. With awe, she probed Estel, “You know the Lord of Rivendell?”

Aragorn looked to Halbarad; the elder Ranger was still whetting his broadsword, though it must surely have been as sharp as a razorblade by now, given that he had been burnishing it the whole time the women had been investigating the younger Ranger’s life. Aragorn knew Halbarad could hear every word said and must have felt Aragorn’s pleading gaze upon him, but Halbarad was only smiling to himself and pointedly ignoring Estel.

_I’m betting he has been asked similar questions over the last few days. He’s likely happy not to be the center of attention tonight!_

Absently, the Ranger began to stroke Nat’s back, though he did so over the blanket covering the young boy. Already, the child was fast asleep, so he ceased shifting the rocking chair and tried to relax his shivering body with stillness. Realizing that he might be saying too much, Aragorn wanted for the women to believe his declaration and so reluctantly admitted, “As I said, I was raised in Rivendell. Lord Elrond is my foster father. His sons and daughter are like siblings to me. So yes, I know him very well.”

As he hoped, the nervous strain caused by Liandra’s question was ameliorated. _For some reason, they seem to trust their herbalist almost as if she were their leader. I wonder why this is so,_ he pondered. _Is Liandra aware of the power she holds over them? Does she use it to her advantage, or is she beneficent?_ When Nat squirmed in his lap, Aragorn unthinkingly began rocking again to soothe the child. _Who runs this village, then? Liandra does not seem wealthy or powerful, except in her knowledge of healing, which no one else here in the village might have, I suppose._

Curious, for he knew little of the inner workings of their settlement and felt it important to know in case he and Halbarad needed to petition those responsible for the decisions made on behalf of the village overall, he now thought it his turn to ask a few questions, and so queried no one in particular but anyone who might be willing to answer him, “Is there not a mayor or Lord here? No leaders? No council?”

“We bow the knee to no Lord,” the elder blind woman told him with some umbrage, popping her head out from under her blanket and shooting a disbelieving, aggravated glare in the man’s general direction. “We are freefolk and will remain so.”

With a bit more diplomacy than her elder had used, Renetta paused in her sewing and explained, “The menfolk gather in the village green every month or so to discuss any issues that might arise. We have no need for guards or sentries, no jail and no courts, like the cities do. No one steals or cheats another here; doing so is taking food from the mouths of one’s own family, because we are all family here. We have our squabbles, of course, but the gathering in the green solves them. We don’t need a mayor or lord to tell us what to do.”

Aragorn watched as the other women nodded in agreement to this explication. He could tell that these women were proud, hard of head and will, and loved their village, kith, and kin fiercely. Personally, Estel had only lived under the rule of his father for any length of time. He had travelled to and taken part of other courts for short periods, such as when he had gone to Gondor or Rohan, or visited Lothlórien, but he had never been a citizen, per se, in any place but Imladris, and since his own foster father ruled the valley with a council of advisors, it was hardly the same as a kingdom such as the one under which Legolas lived, or as existed in Gondor or Rohan. Despite being a “king” – or perhaps because of it and his eschewal thereof – the Ranger found his respect and admiration for these villagers burgeoning. They took care of themselves rather than looking for someone to take care of them; they lived hard and often short lives, working their backs bent and hands raw, but would have it no other way.

“I can see that you do not need a leader. You are all wise enough to know what the right thing to do is and kind enough to take care of each other without being forced to. It is a fine way to live,” he praised them, speaking truthfully, for he thought them noble.

His praise relieved the odd undercurrent in the room that his question had wrought; it also caused the women to stop their investigation of him. Thinking that he ought to speak to Halbarad and looking down to the child he held in his arms – a child who had once more settled because Estel had restarted his rocking – Aragorn thought to tell Renetta to fetch him, though the comfortable weight of the little one in his arms was a pleasingly agreeable feeling. Truth be told, he was glad he had come into the main room to speak to them, for they had taken his mind off his incessant worry for Legolas, at least. To the Ranger’s relief and mild disappointment, Nat’s mother saw that her child was asleep, and putting away her sewing, Renetta finally rose from her bedroll to collect the toddler from Estel’s arms. As she gently took him, she once again gave the Ranger her sweet and innocent smile, though she now appeared adoring, as if she believed Aragorn must be a saint to have come to their village to help them.

As the quiet conversations around him became whispers of goodnight, Aragorn began to shudder under his mountain of blankets. Now that Renetta had claimed her son, the Ranger could no longer seem to control his shivering. Although having Nat in his arms had helped his resolve not to tremble so not to wake the child, Nat’s nearness had not kept him as warm as Legolas’ embrace had. He pushed aside his blankets, carefully laid them in the chair so they wouldn’t fall near to the raging fire, and then trod cautiously between the bedrolls and pallets upon which the women laid so that he could get to Halbarad.

“Don’t you think they should be back by now?” he asked the elder Ranger once close enough to be heard in a whisper. He was unable to hide his misery about not knowing where the Wood-Elf and his fellow Ranger were, and stated, “It feels like hours have passed since they left.”

“It may have felt like hours to you, but I would guess it has only been about an hour, though without checking where Ithil sits in the sky, that is only a guess.” When Aragorn raised his brows in silent beseeching, Halbarad relented to his Chieftain’s unasked request and picked up one of the spare torches. He lit the torch from a lantern and then rose from his seat; with Estel, Halbarad walked to the door. Together, they both looked back to the women, who were quiet, though it was unlikely that any of them were asleep just yet since they had only now quieted down. Halbarad granted with a sigh, “Quickly, then. Let us check.”

Estel took the torch from Halbarad, saying, “I will do it.”

Nodding, the older man swung the door open, while Aragorn held the torch out of the doorway at once so that should anything be on the other side, it would first feel the sting of the flame. He could see nothing out there – not a haunt, an Elf, a Ranger, or any villager – but he had not anticipated finding Legolas or Jakob right outside, anyway. Under the roof of the schoolhouse’s porch, Estel could not see where Tilion currently steered Ithil across the sky, and so walked without to peer out from under the cover of the roof.

Before he made it out of the door’s frame, Halbarad grabbed hold of Aragorn’s elbow, warning him in the paternal fashion Halbarad used with all the younger Rangers, including his Chieftain, “Don’t go any farther than the porch. To save these women and children inside, I will not hesitate to close this door upon you if something comes… though I would rather not, my friend.”

Nodding his understanding and expecting nothing less from the older Adan, Estel swayed his torch out in front of him as he walked only far enough to gauge where the moon sat in the dark and starry sky. Ithil had not sailed far from where it had been when Legolas and Jakob left, causing Aragorn to determine of Halbarad, _He is right. It has only been little over an hour._ As he was already out here, Aragorn took a moment to look out across the village green, scanned the homes and buildings in their vicinity, and then listened intently for any sound. _Come on, Greenleaf. Why are you two tarrying?_ The human willed for Legolas to come walking around a corner or from behind a building, as if the Elf could hear or sense his lover’s desire for him to show ere Aragorn lost his composure. He had never been good at waiting; his impatience was not as bad as it had been when he was a child, but right now, the Ranger jestingly thought that he would throw a temper tantrum in the schoolhouse’s floor if it would bring the Wood-Elf around to fuss at him for his behavior.

From the open doorway behind him, Halbarad queried softly, “Aragorn? We are freezing the women and children. Come back in.”

 _You have another half hour, Greenleaf, and then I am coming to find you,_ he promised the Silvan.

As he began backing up to reenter the school, the sudden, piercingly shrill scream of a woman broke the deathly silence of the night, causing Aragorn nearly to lose his grip upon his torch as he startled severely. At once and out of instinct, Estel moved forward, his ears trying to place the location from where the screaming came so that he could find the source, with years of intentionally seeking out trouble – because in doing so he could aid others – causing him to forgo his own thoughts of safety in favor of ascertaining the welfare of the wailing woman.

“Damn it, get back in here,” Halbarad cursed at him as he strode the few steps it took to reach Estel, his hand finding his Chieftain’s elbow once again. With a rough jerk, the strength behind which belied his advanced age, the silver haired Ranger yanked Aragorn back and pulled him roughly into the schoolhouse. At once, Aragorn thought to leave again and put his hand out to stop Halbarad from slamming the door shut. The elder Adan jostled Estel’s hand from the way and then stepped in front of the door to block his Chieftain’s access to it.

“You heard that the same as did I,” he charged Halbarad, forgetting to lower his voice, and thus earning the attention of the women inside. Those who hadn’t been awoken by the cold draft from the open door were now roused by the loud, anguished shrieks of the nearby woman, as well as by the commotion of the two Rangers’ disagreement. He rumbled at his elder, “Halbarad. Move from the way.”

“Of course I hear it, but charging out into the night to our own deaths does no one any good.” Halbarad spoke truthfully, bluntly, but also guiltily, for Aragorn could see in his friend’s face that the elder Ranger wished to investigate the cause for the screaming as much as did he. The elder Ranger held his hands out as if to ward off the young Ranger, arguing, “I am sure Jakob and Legolas heard it the same as did we, and knowing Jakob, he is running headlong towards her as you just tried to do. They will help her.”

“That is exactly why I cannot stand here and wait to find out what is happening,” he hissed under his breath to Halbarad. “They may need help.”

Again, he moved to grab the knob, despite that Halbarad still stood before the wooden slab door and did not appear as if he would be convinced to move except by force – force that at the moment Aragorn felt desperate enough to use. He could not withstand the idea of Legolas and Jakob encountering the same entity or enemy who would cause a woman to scream with such excruciating abandon. It sounded as if the shrieking woman were being tortured, as if someone were pulling her fingernails out or branding her flesh, for she shrieked not for help or for mercy, but out of sheer and consuming agony. His hand upon the knob, he thought to threaten his friend to get out of the way lest he be obliged to move the older man forcibly, but upon seeing Halbarad’s equally concerned and anxious remorse, Aragorn let go of the knob and shifted his gaze away. He clenched his fists at his sides and closed his eyes. Halbarad seized his Chieftain’s arm and held it silently for a moment, though whether this was intended to be comfort or to contain him, Estel did not know.

Calm in the face of Aragorn’s anger, Halbarad alluded to Legolas’ ability to see the haunt by saying, “Jakob and Legolas are _better equipped_ to deal with it, unlike the two of us. We need to wait here, Aragorn. These women and children need our protection, and we cannot all run headlong into the arms of Námo when this village will need us tomorrow, as well. Besides,” Halbarad murmured, speaking so lowly that Aragorn halted his rapid breathing just to be able to hear the older man, “you would not be so thinking so irrationally if it were not Legolas out there.”

Unwilling to concede this verbally but knowing Halbarad was right, Estel yanked his arm free of the elder man’s hold, rammed his lit torch into the bucket of sand by the door that had been put there by Jakob for this very purpose, and leant in close to warn the elder man in a similarly quiet voice, “If next I hear Legolas screaming like that woman screams now, nothing will bar me from leaving to find him.”

He did not need to threaten violence against Halbarad; his kingly tone and his vicious but simmering anger evinced his unspoken intention to the elder man nonetheless. Halbarad knew that Aragorn did not make idle threats; likewise, he knew that his Chieftain would do what he deemed necessary to save his lover’s life, for he could see the abject desperation in Estel’s haggardly fearful face. Nodding his acquiescence, Halbarad soothed the younger man humbly, “And I wouldn’t try to, my friend. Just stay calm and listen. I will fetch your sword, just in case. But let us have faith in Jakob and Legolas.”

Believing now that Estel would see reason and remain inside, Halbarad shifted away from the door and picked up his broadsword, which he sheathed upon the belt at his waist. He then sat another torch’s cloth-wrapped end in a pan of oil so that it would be ready if needed, ere he slipped into the ensconcement to find Aragorn’s weapons. Estel glanced around the room briefly, having just remembered that he and Halbarad were not alone in this school, but surrounded by women and children who were likely just as frightened as was he. Indeed, the women in the schoolhouse were no longer feigning sleep or disinterest – they were all sitting up, their eyes wide and upon the Ranger, their children clasped to them or clutching each other, as outside, the woman’s portentous, cacophonous bellows went unabated.

 _If something is killing that woman, let it have finished and be gone before they get there,_ he hoped, since he knew that Halbarad was correct and that by choice in their desire to aid the suffering woman, Legolas and Jakob were likely in the thick of the danger. He turned away from the frightened women, unable to face their fear, as it only served to augment his own. Although he figured that he ought to offer them reassurances, Estel could not find it in himself to lie.

 _Half an hour or the slightest indication that you are in trouble and I am coming out to find you,_ he promised. _Please be well, Greenleaf._

Pressing his aching forehead against the door, Aragorn focused his attention upon the shrieking woman, who stopped only when she needed the breath to begin her caterwauling again, it seemed. He counted the seconds with a heavy heart and tormented mind, while listening with rapt, terrorized expectation for Legolas to begin screaming in untold agony, as well.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy, dear readers.

She was smiling at the Elf as if pleased – as one might smile upon meeting a long lost friend by chance in a busy market – though for Legolas, who felt the girl would soon touch him and take his life, their reunion was much less pleasing. His cobalt eyes were glued to the girl’s enflamed rubicund gaze. By dint of sheer willpower, the Prince forced himself to smile back at her as if glad to see her, as well, and by doing so, hoped he might appease her with this kindliness and thus keep her from killing him. The wind whipping between the many fruit trees surrounding the house was growing frostier; as an Elf, the frigid air did not trouble Legolas, of course, but even though unbothered by the algidity of the wind, he felt a strange icy sensation upon his face and knew it was because her fingers lingered in the air so close to the tip of his nose. He distractedly wondered in that split moment if she was near enough to him to do to him as she had done to Estel – that is, to drain the warmth and life from his body as she had Aragorn’s body – or if her actual touch was required for a slow death to be imparted upon him as it had been upon his beloved Ranger.

 _Not yet. Not yet,_ he repeated to himself. The only thought he was aware of having was of his desperate wish to live. He could not save Estel if he were dead. _Please, not just yet._

The newly dead man’s haunt had the same strangely glowing eyes, but instead of the childish glee the girl’s face held, the man looked towards the house with sadness, though he then looked at Legolas with a sagacious, helpless grimace, as if he knew just what had become of him and what it meant. Again, the Silvan felt to be mired in a bog, for even though his hand still held the torch just at the open shutter of the lit lantern, he could not seem to find the will to move it, to light it, and for reasons he could not have named should someone ask him, Legolas felt certain that it would do him no good anyway. Currently, he was kneeling on the ground in the scant light spilling from inside the house and so thought that they should not be able to come so close if the light could truly drive them away, but Legolas had stopped at the very edge of the radiance while the two haunts stood just beyond it. Though a dim glow was upon them, it was no more than what the moon might cast upon the ground.

 _By Ilúvatar’s grace,_ he absently thought when he noted that there laid a wedge of shade in which the two specters remained. The illumination spilling from the house was darkened because something blocked the doorway, something that cast off a strangely man-shaped silhouette, which is when the Silvan realized, _They stand in Jakob’s shadow._

“Legolas?” came a whisper from behind him. Unable to see what the Elf saw, Jakob relied solely upon the Wood-Elf’s strange actions to gauge what might be happening, and thus asked, “Is she here? She is close, isn’t she? The girl?”

With her fingers still held out and nearly upon the tip of his nose, the Prince did not think he could speak without chancing her touching him to quiet him, but he told himself, _I came out here seeking confirmation that she is the cause. If I die without telling Jakob that she is, then when Minyatar sends aid, they will have no substantiation that she is what they are up against._

He thought of Estel and of how passing on his knowledge of the haunt might be the only chance he now had to help prolong his lover’s life; his frantic desire to save Aragorn gave Legolas the courage to speak, which he did as quickly as he could so he could relay as much information as possible – just in case the specter did touch him and took his life before he could finish. He said to Jakob in an unnaturally calm voice, his fear evinced only by the rapidity of his words, “Yes. It is the girl. But also, the man lying dead beside me. They stand just in front of me. Jakob – her hand is out to touch me, just a fingertip away from my nose.”

“Then move, Legolas,” the Ranger harshly hissed at him, his voice coming closer with each word he spoke as he warily walked out upon the back porch.

As the fiery haired man shifted, his shadow shifted, as well; in horrified awe, Legolas watched as the fire and lamplight from the house brightened upon where the dead man’s haunt stood. For a brief second, the light seemed to reflect off the man’s translucent, shabby trousers and equally worn boots. Without lowering her hand, the girl looked up to the man beside her, who looked down to her in what appeared to Legolas to be utter surprise. Then, the man smiled in sweet respite, released the girl’s hand, and was gone as if he had been a wispy trail of smoke from a chimney caught in a gust of wind, dispersing as if he had never stood there at all, his feet the first of him to go and his relievedly smiling face the last.

 _It worked. He is free,_ the Elf’s harried mind supplied of the dead man’s ghost. The Prince had taken note of the human’s smile of relief, yes, and knew that though the light had removed the dead man’s soul from this world, it had been the Adan’s wish for it to be so, at least. After all, who would want to be caught in between living and death, watching in incorporeal purgatory as the corporeal world moved on without him or her, and knowing that she or he could never again be part of it? Legolas prayed, _Sweet Nienna, take pity on that poor man’s soul and his grieving family, but thank you, Námo, for taking him._

The girl haunt looked to her left hand, which was now emptied of the man’s hand she had been holding. Slowly, she lowered it and turned back to Legolas, whose elation to find that the light had proven sufficient to drive away the man’s specter soon faltered, for her benevolent smile of a moment ago was now blatant anguish. It truly hurt the Elf’s heart to see her misery. Once again, he found himself aching to comfort the young girl, though he would not be the fool another time and offer such comfort at the risk of his own life – not when he had yet to find a way to save Estel.

“Legolas. What in the name of the One are you doing? Don’t just sit there. Get up and into the house!” the Ranger barked to him again when Legolas did not reply to him nor do as Jakob had suggested.

 _It isn’t enough. She doesn’t stand in his shadow; she stands in mine. She won’t be touched by the light unless I move, but if I move, surely she will touch me._ And still, the Elf had an unshakeable belief that the girl could not be harmed by it and it was surely just a coincidence that she stood in his shadow now anyway, for hadn’t he first seen her in broad daylight? There was only one way to know for sure; by doing so, they might end the village of its trouble with the simple act of lighting a torch. If their supposition were incorrect, Legolas and perhaps even Jakob would not survive to tell Halbarad and Estel that they had been wrong.

“Jakob,” he murmured, hoping the girl did not understand what he was saying, or that if she did, she would not take it as a threat. Thus far, even at the creek, she had not touched him when she could easily have done so, which made the Elf hope that perhaps she would not do so now. “If I move, she may grab for me. Light your torch.”

“For fuck’s sake, I’ve left them on the front porch,” Jakob cursed loudly, colorfully, and the Elf heard thumping steps as the Ranger ran back to the front of the house, to where he had left his lantern and torch. Moments later, Jakob returned, the torch already lit. Legolas could see its brightness as the Ranger approached him from behind, the flame’s coruscations dancing sultrily about the backyard as he ran back to the Elf. Eager to aid the Silvan, Jakob asked the Prince, “Where? Where are they?”

He told the man again, speaking calmly still and keeping the farcical smile upon his face for the benefit of the girl, “Just in front of me, Jakob. The man is gone. The light drove him off, I think, but she remains.”

Without further consultation, Jakob began swinging the torch wildly around Legolas’ head. The Elf could feel the searing heat of it as the Ranger brought it too close to him and knew that his hair was likely being singed in the process, but he paid none of it any mind. His interest was solely for the transparent being standing before where he knelt in absolute motionlessness. Although the flames themselves did not come close to touching the girl, the light itself played over her translucency, highlighting the thinness of her diaphanous form, the smudges of dirt that had been upon her face, arms, and legs when she died, lambently highlighting her colorless hair, and showcasing the poor quality of her sackcloth dress.

She did not move, did not react, and did not fade. Having hung her head in her sorrow for her newly deceased companion’s vanishing, when Jakob thrust his torch out towards her, the girl lifted her visage to peer at Legolas. She did not even flinch at the proximity of the flashing fire weaving through the air around her.

“Is she gone?” Frantically, Jakob did not cease in his swinging of the torch, but kept on, not giving the Silvan a chance to answer before he asked again, “Legolas, is she gone?”

He felt as if he had been punched in the gut. All the wind whistled out of his lungs, causing a sibilant sigh as it fled through his clenched teeth. _It won’t work. It might have worked on the man, but not on her._

“No… she still stands before me.” Where he knelt upon the ground, Legolas teetered a bit as his body wilted from lack of air. In his despair, he let the unlit torch he held roll out of his hold and onto the ground. He compelled himself into taking a deep breath to forfend the faintness overtaking his mind. Behind him, Jakob let loose a long litany of obscenities – some of which the Elf had never heard before and absently thought that should he live to see Elladan and Elrohir again, he would want to remember Jakob’s imaginative curses to share with the twins, who collected such disgusting phrases like dragons horded gold. Despite being on the verge of all-consuming panic, the Elf assuaged the Ranger by saying, “Calm down, Jakob.”

Before him, the girl was no longer smiling at him, but crying. Iridescent tears trickled down her face from her blazingly red eyes, leaving trails of what looked like liquid, coppery fire upon her lean cheeks. Her trembling bottom lip puckered out in the pout of a child trying not to sob uncontrollably. The Elf nearly reached out to wipe away one of those fiery tears; in fact, he lifted his hand in the desire to comfort the weeping child and was stopped only by more mumbled curses as Jakob tried to quell his own terror. At once, Legolas dropped his arm and fisted his hand into the cloth of his trousers, over his thighs.

_I must be more careful. I am drawn to her like a root to water._

Jakob murmured softly, his burning torch still out over Legolas’ head, though it was now proven useless. He asked, “What do we do?”

It might very well be too late for him, but Jakob’s life could still be spared, at least, which gave Legolas hope that the Ranger could take word to his fellow Watchers of what had happened here, and thus in the end, might held to prolong or perhaps even save Estel’s life. An eerie peace coming over him as he accepted his looming demise, Legolas told the man, “Go back inside. Go inside, shut the door, and keep the woman and her children safe. Take news of what has happened to Halbarad and Estel.”

“I will not,” the man replied at once, umbrage causing him nearly to shout as he insisted, “I am not leaving you out here to face this thing alone.”

“Jakob. One of us needs to live to tell Halbarad and Estel of what has happened here, that the girl is the cause of it. There is no reason for both of us to die. And someone must watch over the woman and her children. Go back inside,” he tried again, infusing as much authority into his tone as possible, and offering a reasonable facsimile of his father’s voice as he ordered, “Go inside, shut the door, and no matter what happens, live to tell Estel so that Elrond’s emissaries will have knowledge of what they face. Go!”

Had Thranduil himself been standing there ordering Jakob to leave Thranduilion alone outside, the pigheaded Ranger still would have refused. Adamant in purpose, a mordantly insulted Jakob retorted again, “I will not. Not unless you are coming in with me, which is the better idea, anyway.”

 _Eru save us… and here I thought only Estel is as stubborn as a mule. It must be a shared trait amongst all the Rangers. Or amongst all Men._ Forgoing trying to convince Jakob any further, Legolas decided he would just have to try to ensure that the Ranger lived, though how he would do so he didn’t know, being that he couldn’t even save himself right now.

“Then be still and quiet and let me think,” he told the Adan. Desperately, the Elf tried to concentrate, to think through what was transpiring, but his thoughts were elusive, as if they were slippery minnows he was trying to catch with bare hands.

He had no wish to perish right now. The Elf knew already that his immortal life would be shorter than it ought to be because of his grief and his choice of a mortal mate, but now was not the time for him to die. He needed to find a way to remove himself and Jakob from the girl’s presence without upsetting her any further, as it might make her act abruptly. Even still, his heart was breaking for the young dead girl before him. She continually wept, her little shoulders shaking as snivels wracked her slight body. The child appeared to Legolas to be so very alone and bereft, so innocent. If she were real, if she were an actual child, the Prince would have long ago gathered her into his arms to try to soothe her.

 _Does she even know what she is doing to these people?_ he thought again now as he had earlier that day. _Why would she kill this man? He walked outside to find the dog, according to his daughter, and she touched him, I suppose, and thus reaped the warmth and life from his body probably ere he even knew what was happening. But why? Why would she do such a thing to any of these people, her fellow villagers, and even her family?_

Some crucial understanding dodged the Elf’s active attention to it. It skimmed along the edges of his conscious thought; the harder he tried to grasp it to scrutinize this abstracted comprehension, the farther way it flitted.

“Go limp,” the Ranger behind him told the Prince. The luminosity of the torch flickered as Jakob drew closer to Legolas, and then, he felt the man’s hand fisting in the cloth of his tunic just above his quiver. “Go limp and do not fight me, and I will drag you back and inside as quickly as possible.”

“No, do not. Do not, Jakob,” he implored the Ranger. He would have moved forward out of the Adan’s grasp had it not chanced moving him into the girl haunt’s grasp. “Just stay back.”

The Ranger did not move back but he did let go of the Prince, though only after huffing in aggravation a few times. Legolas watched as the girl looked worriedly at Jakob, before she looked down to where the Elf knelt on the ground. Without being told, since the haunt did not or could not speak, the Prince somehow knew the girl did not want for him to leave her.

 _A friend. A companion. A playmate. It is almost as if in her loneliness she is seeking out company, rather than seeking to harm anyone._ And with that thought, the Elf grasped that which had confounded him. _I think she knows the light drives the dead’s spirits away to Námo, even though she herself is not harmed by it. She knows. She has killed enough of her fellow Edain to have learnt that if she takes their souls from their bodies in the day, their souls will dissipate as quickly as smoke in the wind because of the daylight. She doesn’t take them in their homes because they have fires and lamps lit. But at night, outside their homes, they can linger. And then, she won’t be alone for at least a while. How many of her kind did she touch and thus kill before she figured this out? Was this dead man’s haunt the only one still surviving, or are there other specters here in the village who have somehow avoided the light and lingered rather than releasing their souls to Mandos?_

If this was true, as Legolas found himself wishing were the case, then the girl wasn’t likely to be evil. She was a child, after all, and scared, lonely, and selfish in the way that children were, since children had yet to grow old enough to realize that they could not have everything they wanted, when they wanted it, no matter the cost to others.

_It doesn’t explain what has caused her soul to linger here, why she is caught between living and death, but it gives me hope. If she’s not evil, if she is merely seeking out companionship, she is not doing so out of spite or wickedness, but from terror and lonesomeness._

In a whisper, Jakob roused the Prince from his pondering, asking, “Your silence is nearly as frightening as that woman’s screams were. What is happening?”

“Listen,” he told the young Ranger in a comparable whisper. “Go back inside where it is safe, please, or stand there silently and still. I want to try something.”

The vagueness of the Silvan’s statement did not sit well with Jakob at all. “Try something? Do not risk your life unnecessarily, Legolas. I am not taking word back to Aragorn that you died out here just to prove a point about a damn ghost.”

He didn’t answer Jakob; instead, Legolas drew in a fortifying breath, smiled at the haunt standing before him, and spoke to the girl, saying, “I am sorry, little one. I am sorry that you are alone and scared.”

The girl child tilted her head to the side, as if she heard him, as if she were heeding his words. This bolstered the Elf’s optimism that she might listen to reason – that is, if he could find the words to explain to her how what she was doing was wrong.

Unaware of his action, Legolas’ upper body leant closer to where she stood before him, his hand unclenching from his trousers and nearly lifting to reach out to her again, as he told her, “I am truly sorry that you are sad and lonely, but you are hurting people. You are killing these innocent people, child, and you need to stop.”

She shook her head at him and frowned in sulky disagreement. A true but brief smile graced the Elf’s face at this, for in that moment, she looked much as Estel had once appeared when he was young and had not gotten his way over some matter. Estel had never really been one to sulk and throw tantrums, but that first summer the Prince had spent with the Adan, when first meeting Estel, the boy had shown his age a time or two when forced to remain behind while the twins and Legolas went hunting or riding beyond where was safe for Estel to follow.

 _So she can hear me. She understands what I am telling her._ It pleased him to think that he might be able to communicate with the girl, but this also caused him fear, for if she had understood what they were saying this whole time, then she might also understand that they were seeking a way to be rid of her, which might cause her to act aggressively.

Gently, he argued against her wordless denial of his claim, “You are. You are killing your friends and family, whether it is your intent or not, young one. You cannot – ” he began, but was interrupted when the specter again lifted her hand out to him. Legolas was frozen in place out of terror and once more feared to try to move away from her reach. However, he now tried a different tact and asked of her, “Don’t. Please. Do not touch me.”

Her fingertips slightly wriggling just inches away from his cheek, the girl’s face crumpled in the telltale manner of a child about to sob. With her fingers so close that Legolas could see the ephemeral dirt stuck under her nails – dirt that had been present upon her real body at the time of her death and that which he supposed would now be permanently caught under her nails for as long as she lingered in this disembodied form – the girl resumed her soundless weeping, though she then closed her eyes.

Legolas had the same feeling as before, when by the creek; a strange humming sound erupted inside his mind, bypassing his ears entirely but originating seemingly within his skull, which began to ache fiercely. His eyes closed simultaneously with hers, but not of his accord. And then, just as had happened by the creek, the Elf saw what the haunt wanted for him to see.

The beautifully warm light of Anor reflected off dazzling waves in softly rippling water. He looked down to find that he was in a lake, though he did not stand in the water, but upon it, as if he were one of the bugs that skimmed across the surface without falling into it. Of course, the look down also showed him the girl’s bare legs and feet, rather than his own. Laughter rang out from across the way; the girl looked up to it, showing Legolas through this memory that two people stood on the shore of the lake.

_Estel. That is Estel and I. This is the lake where we stayed, where first I felt her presence._

The girl moved closer, gliding across the water effortlessly. Legolas felt what she must have felt at the time. The child’s specter was filled with eagerness and gaiety, as though she wished to join in with the Ranger and Elf, who were teasing each other while trying to catch dinner with their makeshift fishing poles of sticks to which stringed hooks were tied. It wasn’t hate or fear or selfishness that made her want to walk up to them, but the desire to join in their fun, to fish and laugh and belong somewhere. Legolas could feel this from her as clearly as he could feel his own sorrow to know that while he and Estel were enjoying themselves immensely at the lake, this poor child’s specter had been watching and waiting for acknowledgement, for an invitation. Not even knowing she was there, he and Estel did neither, and the poor child’s soul languished in the agony of her insufferable isolation.

Hearing Legolas’ softly broken inhales as he wept at the intense heartache he felt from the girl’s haunt and unable to see anything but Legolas, Jakob was losing his patience and now worried what the Elf might do or be doing, or what might be happening to the Silvan, and so asked, “What is it? Why are you weeping, Legolas?”

He tried to ignore Jakob lest the spell the girl had cast upon him be broken, but soon enough, the image of Legolas and Aragorn at the lake disintegrated and he was left staring at the girl’s haunt. Able to see with his own eyes again, the Wood-Elf was met once more with the specter’s smiling face – though now, she looked at the Elf with expectation, as if by showing him what she had, he might now understand or do something. She had bared her soul to him through this imagery; she also confirmed his theory of the underlying reasoning behind her actions.

Not answering Jakob, Legolas instead spoke to the girl, telling her in simplistic terms that a child could easily understand, “That man at the lake, the one with whom you saw me fishing that day – he is my friend. You touched him by the creek and now he is dying. If that happens, I will be as sad as you are now.”

The muscles of his chest constricted painfully when the girl hung her head in ostensible shame. _She looks just like a child being chastised,_ he thought to himself, but then realized, _of course, I suppose that is exactly what she is._ He risked angering the haunt by speaking now, by admonishing her for her wayward behavior, but some part of the Elf hoped foremost to end this without having to end her, if such a thing were even possible. Some part of Legolas wanted for her to stop terrorizing the villagers without his or anyone else having to upset the child further. Speaking to her was the only way he could fathom; and so, Legolas recalled the many times he, Elladan, and Elrohir had been on the shared receiving end of Elrond’s lectures for their misbehaviors in their Elfling years. Drawing upon these experiences, he decided to sound as much like his Minyatar as possible. No matter what misdeed he or the twins had performed, no matter how much trouble they had caused or how angry Elrond might truly have been, the Peredhel had always treated them with respect, understanding, and love, and sought to show them the error of their ways, rather than merely punish them, as had the laegel’s own father been wont to do.

So again, the Elf forced himself to smile gently at her, such that when she finally raised her head again, she would see he was not trying to be cruel. Ignoring the Ranger behind him, who was becoming increasingly agitated with the Silvan and with his own frustration at being unable to aid Legolas, the Prince spoke again in the soft, kind tone Elrond had often used with him years ago when trying to explicate why what the Elfling Prince had done was wrong. “You must stop this. You know when you touch these people – your people, your family and friends and neighbors – you are hurting them. You cannot keep killing these people just because you are lonely and looking for a friend.”

“What on Middle Earth – ”

“I have friends who are coming to help you, I promise,” he continued as if Jakob had not tried to interrupt and was relieved when the girl’s ghost finally raised her head to look at him. Sullen but paying attention, the haunt fixed her ghastly, comburent gaze upon the Elf. “They can reunite you with your family, with your mother and father and your baby brother. You need only to release your faer – your soul, I mean,” he corrected since he doubted the girl understood the Sindarin word, “to Námo’s care. Your family is waiting for you there. My friends and I can help you. I promise; we can help you, if you promise not to harm anyone else.”

Legolas could feel the moisture from his weeping as it slid down his face but did not dare to reach up to wipe it away; the girl, however, did just that as she looked to the Elf. She brushed away the strangely fiery tears upon her gaunt cheeks, wound her thin arms around her tiny waist, and backed up a few steps. He was not foolish enough to think that just because she had stepped back that he was safely out of her reach, but the Prince took the opportunity to stand anyway, leaving his unlit torch and lit lantern upon the ground as he did so. This action caused the Ranger to assume the danger was over.

“Is she gone?” a hopeful Jakob asked from behind the Elf.

“No. Please,” he implored the Adan, “hush for a moment. She is listening to me.” Legolas did not chance taking his eyes off the girl as he pled with Jakob, “Stay back and stay quiet. We are fine. She is fine. She is considering my offer,” he explained, ere he told the child again in slightly different words, just to be sure she understood his meaning, “I know you are alone and sad, but we will find a way to reunite you with your family, but only if you promise to be good and not hurt anyone else. Be good. Be kind.”

Suddenly, the haunt nodded her head at Legolas and gave him a teary smile. In return, the Prince’s forced smile became genuine, and he thought to appease her by repeating his promise or giving her some form of encouragement or praise, but the moment he opened his mouth to say something, she stepped forward, her hand out once more. His only thought before her fingers seemingly slid into the cloth and then skin and muscle of his chest was once again what he had earlier thought, his mind only supplying in horror, _Not yet, Eru, please. I cannot die until Estel is saved._

An acute coldness radiated out from the center of the laegel’s chest. Having felt the bitterest winds of winter upon the highest peaks of the Misty Mountains, the Elf thought he knew what cold felt like. He had been wrong. In some marveling part of his functional mind, the Silvan queried if this biting chill was how the Edain felt the cold, if this was how Aragorn had felt the same bitter winds upon the mountaintops, and if so, he wondered how the human could possibly withstand it. The Prince looked down to where her childish, translucent hand lingered inside his torso, her forearm seemingly ending at the wrist. Quite literally, Legolas could feel each of her algid fingers as they writhed inside his flesh; his terror arrested his breathing and nearly halted his heart’s rampant beating.

He knew in that moment what it was she thought she was doing for him – not _to him,_ but _for him,_ for as his living flesh and her deathly specter were joined, he could read her mind and intentions as if they were his own. Had the Prince not endured the vociferations of the scar – the now absent but once overwhelmingly active dissociative, bodily formation in which his grief had resided – then he might have very well gone mad in that moment. But Legolas had plenty of experience with feeling as if the thoughts and images in his mind were not of his own making, since the sorrow-borne scar he had once endured had felt much like the girl haunt felt to him now – that is, separate, insane, and overwhelming. Yes, the Elf could understand clearly just what she thought she was doing for him.

Estel was dying. She knew this. She had caused this. Legolas had made her feel guilty and burdened by her actions, by her touching Estel as she touched him now. And so, to aid the Elf – in her thinking, at least – she touched Legolas to cause him the same death as she was causing Aragorn so that the two lovers could be together. She thought she was being good. She thought she was being kind.

“Legolas?” he heard from Jakob, whose voice sounded distant and tinny, as if he were calling to the Elf from inside a dry well.

He thought to speak. Legolas had so many things he wanted to say just then. He wanted to tell his father that he forgave him, loved him, and that he was sorry he would not be returning to Eryn Galen come spring as he had promised. He wanted to tell his Minyatar and the twins that he would see them again in the Halls of Awaiting; he wanted them to know how much he loved them, as well, and that they were not to grieve for him. He wanted to tell Kalin not to worry over him and not to follow him into death. Most importantly, the Elf wanted one more time to tell Estel that he loved him. Even had any of his loved ones been there in what he assumed was his final living moment, Legolas found himself incapable of speech. He could not move at all, for that matter, and only stood there, his gaze ever upon the hand inside his chest, until it was suddenly removed. With it, the cold sensation reduced, his body inhaled of its own accord in a gaspingly shrill breath, and Legolas fumbled back a step as a tremor overtook his entire body.

The girl gave him a sweet and blameless smile. She was very pleased with herself, the Elf could tell. Legolas’ legs gave out from under him and he fell back to the ground on his knees.

When he looked up to see what the girl did now, she was gone.

The Silvan took in another shuddering, relieved, and wonderfully deep breath, which he exhaled in a slow and ponderous manner. Forgetting that Jakob stood behind him for the nonce, the Elf used the sleeve of his tunic to wipe off his face and sat back on his heels. Inside his chest, he could still feel her fingers wriggling about, though whether this was his imagination or the same curse she had bestowed upon Estel, the Elf did not know, nor did he care, for the moment, since he lived still to be of aid to his lover – for a while yet, at any rate.

His vexation making the Elf’s name sound like an expletive, Jakob muttered exasperatedly, “Legolas. Legolas?” he tried to prompt the silent Elf.

In the end, Jakob did not wait for an answer, but having had enough of the Silvan’s reticence, of not knowing what was going on, and having humored Legolas’ strange idea of talking to the invisible girl’s haunt for as long as he could tolerate, Jakob slid his hands under the unresisting Wood-Elf’s arms, where he gripped the Prince tightly to yank him unceremoniously up the stairs and onto the porch. Too late did Legolas think to put his feet under him and walk, for his shock made his limbs feel limp and useless, and Jakob had the Silvan in the house, where he threw him none too gently against the wall just beside the doorway, and then slammed the door behind them before the Prince finally shook off the bewilderment he felt over what had just happened.

“You’re raving mad,” the flamingly red-haired Ranger accused the Elf at once. Jakob spun on heel to look at the woman and her children, all of whom remained huddled together by the fireplace, the mother’s arms about her young ones while the baffled boy and girl only stood there, for they had yet to understand what had happened to their father. Seeing the trio was safe, Jakob ran his palms over his face, each hand fisting around a braid in his long beard, which he then tugged with what must have been painful force. “You are a complete and utter madman, Legolas.”

Legolas crawled his way into sitting properly upon his rear with his back against the closed door. His legs felt shaky and his sides hurt as if he had been running for days without stop. The now subdued wails of the grieving, freshly widowed woman; the dull and baffled eyes of her children; the algid flesh of the corpse of their father outside; the iridescent, fiery tears of the child haunt and her loneliness, fear, and longing merely to be seen, to be spoken to, to be friended – the Silvan let loose a nearly inaudible, sobbing exhale. The Elf pulled his knees up to his chest, his quiver making an awful screech as it grated the wooden door and his bow coming unlatched and clattering to the floor beside him. The Prince did not notice. He squeezed his eyes closed and could still see the burning red orbs of the haunt’s eyes behind his closed lids.

“Legolas? Are you well?” The Elf opened his eyes to find that the Ranger now knelt before him so closely that he could see the pale freckles scattered across Jakob’s nose and cheeks. Unable to look the man in the eye, Legolas observed instead the family at the hearth, but turned his regard away from them, as well, when he noted that the little boy and girl were staring openly at him and the Ranger. Jakob snapped his fingers in front of the Elf’s face as if to gain his attention and queried, “What the fuck just happened out there?”

“She touched me, just as she did Estel, as she did the man lying dead outside on the ground.”

With Jakob’s new litany of curses upon hearing this dire news, the Silvan looked up to the Ranger again, whose vexed irritation at the Elf was now concern for him, instead. Settling his forearms upon his knees and taking another reassuring, deep breath, he briefly wondered how long he had before he ended up as dead as the man on the ground outside, and whether it would be long enough to save Estel’s life.

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Received a lovely comment today that inspired me to post, just when I thought I would never work up the gumption to work on this chapter! Thanks. And enjoy!

Legolas watched Jakob in distracted, anxious amusement. Although the Ranger’s fiery hair was mostly caught in a simple plait that started from his nape and trailed midway down his back, a lock behind his ear had come free from this braid – this lock was currently being tortured, as Jakob alternatingly yanked the lock, chewed on the ends of this section of bright hair, and looped it around his thick fingers, all the while thinking over what Legolas had just told him. A moment ago, the Silvan had finished explaining to the Ranger what had happened between himself and the haunt, that which the Adan had not been able to see since he could not see the girl, though of course, Jakob had heard and viewed Legolas’ side of their odd encounter so luckily did not need to hear but half the tale. Currently, the man was pondering over this information, all the while tapping the spit-wetted lock of hair against the side of his freckled nose.

_We cannot sit here any longer. Estel or Halbarad will be out looking for us if at least one of us does not soon return to the schoolhouse with news, and since we are not even on the path we established, they will not be able to find us. As loud as she was and as quiet as the village is because of the curfew, they might have heard the woman’s screams – I hope her shrieking did not draw them outside to investigate. Knowing Estel, if they did hear her, then Halbarad likely had to tackle Estel to the ground to keep him inside._

Sitting in front of the family’s backdoor, the Elf had not moved far from where Jakob had tossed him upon dragging the Silvan within the house a short while ago. The mother and her children were before the fire, not having moved far either, but remained close to where Jakob had pushed them to safety before the young Ranger had followed the Elf out into the backyard. Although the woman was still sobbing quietly, she no longer wailed and keened. Her children seemed finally to understand at least some of what had occurred, for though earlier they had kept wide-eyed watch over the backdoor in wait for their father to come back in, they now cried with their mother; and yet, the Elf considered that perhaps the young Edain were merely reacting in confused empathy for their mother’s ostensible sorrow.

 _I cannot feel her nearness anymore, but that doesn’t mean she is gone, I suppose,_ he thought of the girl’s haunt, _nor does it mean that she might not come back. One of us will have to stay here to keep watch over the young ones to ensure that in her frenzied grief, their mother does not act rashly and thus endanger her children._

Legolas knew grief well and understood what strange effects it had on the one grieving. He wished he could offer the mother some comfort or at least explain what had happened, but he had little experience with inconsolably weeping Edain women. Besides, from the frightened looks that the little boy and girl often threw his way, he thought that his being an Elf might only hinder his ability to comfort their sorrow, as he knew that to them, he looked and sounded different, and was a stranger to their customs and lands. He did not want to exacerbate the children or mother’s heartache with fear for him, as it might also cause the woman or her children to act irrationally and thereby endanger them.

 _Jakob is better suited to staying here and seeing to this family’s needs,_ he decided, turning his weary gaze back to the Ranger sitting on his haunches on the floor directly in front of him. The man now had his lock of hair twisted around one of the braids in his beard, as if plaiting the two together. _Besides, there is no reason to risk Jakob’s life now that my own is likely forfeit._

If the Elf were being honest with himself, he might admit that for all his vindicating, his true reason for wanting Jakob to remain here and for him to return to the schoolhouse was of a more selfish nature – Legolas desperately wanted to check on Estel. A vague fear fostered inside his belly, reminding the Elf of watching water boil in a pot, with the liquid moiling and roiling slowly at first until the heat built up and the water’s agitation caused it to effervesce up over the sides. If Legolas did not soon appease his need to see that his Adan lover was well, he would lose his composure entirely. Already, the Silvan was on the brink of panic and only the fear of inciting alarm in the mother and her two children kept his anxiety reined in for the nonce.

“Jakob.” Legolas leant away from the door, climbed to his knees, and then sat upon his heels to replace his bow upon the catch on his quiver. Jakob frowned and looked at the Elf, his lock of hair now tangled in with his braided beard. Straightening his tunic upon his torso, the Prince asked of the harried human, “Remain here with the woman and her children. Please. Keep watch over them until tomorrow morning, when we can find some of their relatives or friends with whom they can stay, or until they can be moved into the schoolhouse with the other women and children. It is not safe for them to go to the schoolhouse now, I think. The haunt is gone – I cannot feel her – and while I believe she may refrain from touching anyone else, it is best not to give her the chance.”

“And where are you going?” the man asked, scrambling to his feet when the Elf rose to his.

He could see in the Ranger’s face the very look that he had grown to abhor and dread seeing in his lover, friends, kith, and father’s faces – that is, Jakob’s apprehension that the Elf had gone mad. In fact, in that moment and despite looking little like Aragorn, Jakob gave the Prince much the same worried and distraught grimace that Estel often wore when he wished to keep the laegel from doing something he believed to be daft or lunatical, but was too mindful of not treating Legolas like a child to argue against the Elf’s doing. _He thinks I will run outside and into the arms of the haunt,_ the Prince crossly disbelieved, but then with a snort of acerbic delight that only caused Jakob to peer evermore nervously at him, the laegel realized, _I suppose I have already done that tonight, haven’t I?_ He needed to calm the Ranger swiftly so that he could leave swiftly.

“Listen: I am already touched. Why I linger as does Estel, I do not know, but there is no reason to place yourself in the same position. You may not be as lucky as am I,” he argued, smiled forlornly at his own phrasing of his current circumstances as ‘lucky,’ and then continued, “Someone needs to stay here, Jakob. Halbarad or Estel, or both of them, will come looking for us if one of us does not soon return with news, and I do not want to risk their lives, either.”

Reluctantly, the Ranger nodded, for he could see the wisdom in Legolas’ reasoning. Adjusting his weapons about his person, Legolas gave the man what he hoped was a benignly reassuring smile and then began across the room. He only made it a few steps ere he was stopped by a hand upon his forearm, which pulled the Silvan to a stop. Some of the many candles in this part of the single room downstairs floor were beginning to gutter out, which cast Jakob’s speckled face in flickering shadows as he said, “It is Elf-blood. That explains it.”

Confused by the Ranger’s seemingly random statement and not liking being touched by the Adan despite his newfound trust of him, the Prince tugged his limb free of Jakob’s hold. He queried simply, “Elf-blood?”

“You are Elf-kind. Aragorn is not an Elf, but he’s of Númenórean descent, with diluted Elven blood, yes?” the Ranger ruminated, looking about the kitchen table by which they stood near the front door. Upon said table were baskets of late autumn apples and several loaves of oat bread. Jakob began fiddling with the apples in the nearest basket as he tried to think aloud to Legolas what he had apparently been pondering on his own moments previous, “Every man, woman, and child whom she has touched has died at once, as far as we know, except you two. And you both carry Elven blood.”

Impressed by Jakob’s quickness of mind, Legolas stood in stunned silence. Such a thing had not occurred to him, although it had been foremost on his mind as to figure out why Estel and now he lived beyond the haunt’s touch when everyone else died immediately afterwards. _Then I may outlive Estel, since as Jakob says, Estel is of Elven heritage from many generations ago,_ he stewed, _if dilution of that heritage even matters at all. If it does not, then still, whatever it is that is slowing our demises, it gives us me time to find out how to stop this before it is too late for Estel._

While he desired to survive for at least as long as it took to find a means to save Aragorn, if neither Estel nor he had any chance of reversing the hiemal, gelid death the girl-child had bestowed upon them, then he did not want to outlive Aragorn by long anyway. A sudden, soft whine came from the other side of the room, where the mother and her now smaller family had moved as one to a rocking chair near to the fire; both Ranger and Prince whirled to see the cause of this wailful sound, each fearing that something had occurred to the woman or her children, but the mother had her children in her arms upon her lap. The dog cowering at their feet had made the pitiful sound, it seemed, for as the man and Elf watched, the poor animal whined again as it tried to crawl into the Adan woman’s lap along with her young ones. Legolas watched absently as the softly yowling dog gave up on finding comfort from its distracted masters and instead came to where he and the Ranger stood. Jakob knelt down as if to pet the mutt, but the canine crawled right between the Adan’s bent knees and placed his paws upon the man’s chest; in response, the Ranger gathered the small dog into his arms and stood, thus holding the terrified animal like a small, equally terrified child.

His thoughts returning to Jakob’s presumption, he decided, _If being an Elf keeps me from becoming incapacitated for a while longer than it will Estel, I will still be able to fight to save him and this village, even should Estel be unable to aid me._  

“You may be right,” he told the Ranger when the dog finally quieted after a moment of being held in Jakob’s arms and of listening to the man’s unintelligibly spoken, soothing murmurs. The Silvan’s need to leave was now increased after his deliberations on this new possibility. “My and Estel’s slowed deaths might also be something of her own design… I do not know, but I will tell Halbarad and Estel of your theory and of everything that has happened tonight. Thank you,” he told the Ranger while giving the lanky man a sincere smile of gratitude. “Thank you for staying outside with me tonight. And for pulling me inside the house.”

For this first time since coming here, Jakob smiled the carefree grin of his that lit up his whole being. He hefted the small, quiescent, and calmed dog in his arms and said, “Just remember to tell Aragorn that I tried to get you to come inside from the start, so he doesn’t skin me alive for your getting touched by that haunt, will you? No way I am taking the blame for that.”

Legolas snickered a time or two in sarcastic amusement but then quieted himself out of respect for the grieving family across the way. “I won’t let Estel get near you with his flaying knife,” he teased gently, then turned serious as he instructed in regards to the woman and her children by the hearth, “Keep them safe, Jakob, and you stay safe, as well.”

The Ranger nodded with sudden solemnity and followed Legolas to the door. The Prince did not hesitate but opened the door and walked outside into the dark of night, turning back only long enough to ensure that Jakob shut the entry behind him before he began down the steps to the path leading to the road meandering through this part of the village. Even as he walked away from the house, he felt nothing suggesting the girl’s haunt was close by, so thought perhaps she wasn’t in the village elsewhere, either. He wondered, _Where does she go when she is not here? To the lake? To the farm where her family lived? Does she stay someplace of which she holds fond memories?_ Having no answers for these queries, the Elf merely responded to his own questions with, _Wherever she is, I hope she stays there for the rest of the night._

It might have been a shorter distance to walk the rest of their circuitous route back to the schoolhouse, but the Elf was unfamiliar with the village and did not wish to chance getting lost, and thus risk increasing the Rangers’ wait for his return; and so, Legolas backtracked the same way he and Jakob had walked to get where he now stood. The unlit torches lining the road remained unlit. The houses where Halbarad and Jakob had stationed men capable of fighting upon being called by Jakob were not the only homes from which light filtered through shutters and doorframes, being that all were asked by Halbarad to keep their homes well-lit, but the Elf deemed it was likely that most of the adult villagers were awake still anyway – even those not charged with responding to Jakob’s potential call for aid.

 _They probably have all heard the Adan woman’s screams. I hope none of them came running out of their homes to help._ This thought only reminded him that Aragorn and Halbarad were sure to have heard the woman’s wailing, as well, and he again feared that one or both of the Rangers might have left the schoolhouse to find the woman, or Jakob and Legolas. His already rapid pace increased until he was sprinting recklessly along the road, but soon, he had to pause, for an unusual tightness in his chest made breath hard to come by.

Leaning against the post of a fence surrounding a pen where chickens normally would be clucking and strutting had they not been inside for the night as were they now, the laegel pressed the heel of his hand to his chest, where a strange sensation lingered in the middle of the halves of his breast, below where his heart laid. It felt to the Silvan as if the girl’s icy hand were still inside the warmth of his torso. Indeed, even now, Legolas could still pinpoint five different squirming, algid shafts of numbness in his chest, as if her fingers were still squirming inside his flesh as they had a while ago.

Often, when his anxiety began to overwhelm him, Legolas felt as if he could not draw in sufficient air, and now, unable to take a deep breath because of the effects of the girl’s maleficent touch, the Wood-Elf gasped for breath as if drowning. Thus, not being able to breathe properly incited his nervousness and his panic swelled exponentially as he began to fear the anxiety itself.

 _Not now. Just breathe, you fool,_ he railed at himself. _I have to get back to Estel. I do not have time for this._

Keeping his hand upon the rail of the fence, the Prince forced himself into walking onwards, following the fence until the end, where an intersection of the dirt path upon which he walked met the main, flagstoned path.

 _I must be close. Please let me be close,_ he prayed as he stumbled out into the middle of the road to see beyond the obstruction of the buildings blocking his view of what was up ahead.

When he saw the bridge spanning the village green, the Elf knew that he had not lost his way, and so was finally able to take in a deep breath. His mind clearing somewhat from the haze of dread overtaking him, Legolas began to trot to the bridge, where across the schoolhouse sat and his Estel could be found.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Elf and Ranger were not bonded as the Eldar, no, but they had an appreciable bond, nonetheless. Earlier, Legolas’ rage and panic over being touched by Jakob had roused Estel before the man had actually heard anyone speak. Likewise, in Mirkwood, when Legolas had been slowly exsanguinating in his bathtub after hewing the flesh from his marred thigh, the Adan had known that his lover was in dire condition, even though he had not known what had happened to make this so. Other times since the two had joined their bodies and professed their love for each other, Aragorn had felt or believed that the Silvan was upset or in danger even without having seen or heard anything that might cause this belief. He thought little of it, since for the most part, Estel was ever worried for the Elf, but at this very moment, Aragorn knew without a doubt that all was not well with his Elven lover. He had no idea why or what or how or where, but he knew the Elf was caught in the whelming depths of panic, which only firmed his volition to find the Elf.

Aragorn could wait no longer. The Ranger pulled his cloak about him and clasped it at his throat. It would provide little help in keeping him from shivering, as even now, despite being in the warmth of the schoolhouse, Estel shivered as if standing shoulder deep in a snowdrift. However, his cloak was all he had, being that he couldn’t go out wrapped in a cocoon of blankets.

 _I am coming for you, Greenleaf,_ he promised to the Elf as if Legolas might hear him. And perhaps the Wood-Elf had heard him, for the Ranger could sense that his lover’s terror abated slightly. _I am leaving now. I will find you, meleth nin._

“Give them a little more time,” Halbarad said again as he had been saying for the last half hour. The elder Adan would not physically try to impede Aragorn – nor would Estel allow him to – but Halbarad was still trying his damnedest to keep the younger man from leaving. He moved to stand in front of the door and held his hands out to Estel, telling him, “The screaming has stopped and all is quiet. Perhaps they have halted whatever has happened, or perhaps they were too late, but either way, there is no sign that Jakob or Legolas is in danger. Just wait, Aragorn, please.”

He did not bother to answer. He was leaving to find his wayward lover. He had to know if Legolas lived. It was true that the keening shrieks of before had stopped, but this did little to comfort Aragorn. Nor was it of any comfort to the women lying and sitting wide-awake around the fireplace at the opposite end of the long room. As Legolas was thinking at this very moment, Estel had to wonder if the rest of the village had heard the woman’s shrieks, as well, and he hoped that the townspeople did not try to investigate or help, as they would only likely become caught in whatever unpleasantness was occurring. Willfully, Aragorn disregarded the fact that he was not doing as he hoped the villagers would do – that is, staying safe by staying inside.

Several minutes earlier, Liandra had come to the two Rangers, seeking information on behalf of the other women but also to satisfy her own curiosity; however, neither Halbarad nor Aragorn had any information to give her. She stood beside Estel now, her face fierce as she argued to Halbarad, “Let him go. What if the Elf and your fellow Ranger need aid? Or the woman who was screaming? If I could still swing a blade as when I was younger, I would go with him. Somebody out there needs help and you are doing no one any good standing here.”

He had no intention of joining the discussion by agreeing with Liandra, but neither did Halbarad argue against the herbalist. Aragorn roughly pushed past Halbarad, who did not offer up opposition to his Chieftain’s intention of leaving this time, although he yet again tried to convince Estel by warning him with the reminder, “If you leave here, do not come back with danger upon your heels. I am not risking these women and children for you, Aragorn, nor for Legolas or Jakob. You know this.”

To this, at least, Estel responded, for he expected nothing less of Halbarad and would do the same were their roles reversed; thus, he readily approved of the elder man’s plans. The younger Ranger paused with his hand upon the door only long enough to reply, “Nor would I want you to. If Legolas or Jakob returns while I am gone, have them stay here. I will walk their route and seek sign of them, and come back to check for their return after doing so.”

Halbarad’s lips worked as if words lingered on his tongue; he said nothing, however, but nodded his acceptance. Aragorn gave Halbarad and Liandra a final glance ere he yanked the door open with dire purpose, stepped out in the chill of the night uncaring of the immediate shudders the cold air caused him, and then strode resolutely across the porch and down the two steps to the yard just in front of the schoolhouse – all of his determination fled him in an instant and he stopped midstride when he saw someone jogging across the bridge. The flash of butter-colored hair in the silvery moonlight and the lithe, graceful motions of the runner told the Adan exactly who was coming their way. Relief flooded through the man.

_Greenleaf. Thank you, Eru, for letting him return to me._

He considered running out to meet the Elf, so eager was he to touch the Silvan to ascertain Legolas’ well-being and health, but from behind him – for he had come out onto the porch along with Aragorn – Halbarad murmured frantically and caused his Chieftain to halt with this question, “I see Legolas, but where is Jakob?”

It was a good question and one of many Estel had for his Elven lover, who finally looked their way to see how Estel stood in the schoolyard. Legolas did not slow his slightly shambling trot, though he did look beyond the Ranger to spy Halbarad on the porch with Liandra standing in the doorway just behind him; seeing all of these Edain outside provoked the Prince’s concern for what might have occurred to draw them all outside and into the danger lurking in the still of night. The moment that the Elf grew near enough not to have to shout to be heard by the humans, the Prince asked breathlessly, “What is it? What is wrong? Why are you out here, Estel? Go back inside where it is warm.”

 _Something is wrong. Something very ill has happened,_ he knew at once from the Elf’s guarded and beleaguered visage. Moreover, hearing the Silvan winded was disturbing to Aragorn, since it was rare that one of the Firstborn became so. _Is he hurt?_

Legolas slowed as he trod across the schoolyard, which is when the man noted the Elf’s slightly glazed over, wide-eyed fearfulness. Not answering the Prince, Aragorn instead scanned Legolas’ fair face for signs of what might be the matter, while thoughts of the haunt, qualms over the Elda’s earlier reaction to Jakob’s touch, worries of the Prince’s latent grief manifesting, and terror for the resumption of the scar’s castigation raced through his mind as possibilities for his lover’s current gasping and perturbed state. But having just decided to risk coming outside to find the Elf because he could feel Legolas’ terror as if it were his own, the Adan guessed correctly, _He is panicked. While there may be some reason for it, he looks now as he has before, when his anxiety is mounting without abatement._  

He stood there in counterfeit calm until Legolas came to a stop before him, which is when Aragorn immediately grabbed the Silvan by the upper arms to pull the Elf into his embrace. Not caring that Liandra and Halbarad were standing behind them and thus could see this more than friendly affection, Aragorn wound his arms around the Prince’s shoulders and held tightly to him. To the relief of his vexed mind but also to the satisfaction of his ever-insatiable desire to feel the living flesh and beating heart of his Greenleaf, Aragorn relaxed all the more when Legolas returned this hug just as fiercely by twisting his own arms around the Ranger’s middle. The Wood-Elf turned his face into the man’s neck, his panting breaths coming too fast and too few against the man’s whiskered throat. Yet, with each second that they stood that way, Legolas’ anxiety abated, his breathing slowed and became deeper, and the man’s unease lessened concomitantly with the Prince’s panic.

Halbarad interrupted the peaceful moment between the two lovers by asking of the Elf, “Legolas… where is Jakob? What has happened?”

Reluctant to release the Wood-Elf, he nonetheless allowed Legolas to step away from him to answer his fellow Ranger’s question. The Prince reassured the elder human, “Jakob is well, I promise you. He is with a newly widowed woman and her two children, staying the night in their house to keep them safe. We felt it too dangerous to bring them here tonight, though I came to bring word so that no one would come looking for us,” the Wood-Elf explained, turning to Aragorn with a meaningful, sagacious glare, for though the man had never answered his lover’s questions as to why he was outside, Legolas knew just why Aragorn was out here.

Offering the Prince a brief, sheepish grin at the mild reproach, he then inferred from the Elf’s elucidation, _Freshly widowed? Then someone has died again tonight._

Loudly and relievedly, Halbarad sighed, and then told the two as he motioned with his hand for them to hurry along inside, “Come in, come in. We are freezing the women and children by leaving the door open. Not to mention tempting fate,” the older man grumbled under his breath.

Winding his arm in the Prince’s arm, Estel compelled the Wood-Elf into walking along with him and was not keen to let go. It wasn’t until they were up the stairs and to the door that they released each other’s limb so they could walk singly through the narrow door, which Halbarad promptly shut behind them. For Estel, walking into the warmth of the schoolhouse was akin to walking from the dead of winter into the height of summer, and although he shivered despite the calidity, the strange torpor of his body and mind, which seemed to accompany his flesh’s freezing discomfort, was relieved by the abrupt change in temperature, at least.

Aragorn watched the laegel’s face, looking for signs of what was causing Legolas’ disquiet, and thus noticed how the Elf immediately turned away from the women in the room, all of whom were staring at the Elf, Rangers, and Liandra as they came back within the schoolhouse. Without explanation, Legolas slipped between Liandra and Halbarad to walk to the gap between the bookcases nearby, which led into the ensconcement behind the shelving. Estel did not hesitate to follow, nor did Halbarad, and unsurprisingly, Liandra followed, as well, since she wished to hear what was happening and have her answers.

 _Perhaps after Legolas tells us what has occurred, Liandra will be able to soothe the women with some knowledge of what she hears, although I hope she does not tell them everything,_ Estel considered of Liandra. So far, only the Rangers, Legolas, and Liandra knew of the girl’s haunt being the potential cause of the deaths in the village. If the herbalist told the women in the schoolhouse, terrified pandemonium would ensue, Aragorn was sure of it. It was his desire to keep the unearthly cause of the trouble the village experienced from becoming public knowledge just yet – at least until they had good news or a course of action to share with the villagers, such that their fear could be assuaged by knowing that they had a plan to stop the haunt.

Legolas walked to the far end of the hidden area, where the table and bed sat, and began unbuckling the straps to his quiver. Laying his bow and quiver upon the desk, he then removed his long knife to lay it beside his other weapons. The Elf’s reticence was unnerving to Estel, but also to Liandra and Halbarad, who despite not knowing the Prince as Estel did, could still tell that the Silvan was acting peculiarly. Legolas must have recognized that Aragorn and Halbarad wanted to know what had transpired, but thus far, he offered no further explanation than that Jakob lived and someone had died. He stopped at the head of the bed to watch the laegel, while Halbarad stopped just behind him and Liandra just behind Halbarad in the narrow corridor of the hidden area. To Aragorn’s surprise, Legolas began removing his tunic, as well, and pulled it over his head after unfastening the clasps running down its front. He grabbed the hem of his undershirt to do the same with it, as well, until the Silvan noted that Liandra stood behind the two Rangers. The Elf did not stop out of a sense of modesty, but out of uncertainty as to whether the older woman ought to hear what Legolas might say or see what the Elf might show them.

“This is Liandra, the village’s herbalist and healer,” Aragorn explained to the Wood-Elf, since Legolas had yet to meet the elderly woman. Besides, the man was desperate for the Prince to speak, to explain, and wanted for the Elf to do so quickly, no matter who might be listening. “She can be trusted. I have already told her what we encountered on our way here; she knows much of what we know, if not all of it.”

His human lover’s assurance was all that the Elf needed, it seemed, for he proceeded to take off his undershirt and thereby exposed his finely fleshed, beautifully muscled alabaster chest to the Rangers and healer. As stunning as the view was, Estel asked himself, _I see no injury, no contusing, and no blood; so, what is Greenleaf doing?_

Leaning his rear against the edge of the desk, Legolas began examining his chest by palpating and inspecting in the hollow just under where his breastbone ended. Suddenly, the Ranger knew what had happened without his being told, and his heart began to thrum painfully inside his own chest. When the haunt had touched Aragorn, he had done much the same as Legolas did now; that is, rubbing and touching where the icy sensation of the girl’s fingers lingered upon his skin. He dreaded to ask aloud what his stressed mind feared, however, as he dreaded to hear the confirmation.

 _Please no,_ the Ranger begged no one in particular. He walked around the end of the bed, struggling in the tight space to move past Halbarad as he did so, and then stopped just before the Elf. _Please don’t let it be._

Aragorn stepped forward until he and Legolas stood nearly nose to nose, and then took over his lover’s task of scrutinizing his sinewy torso. From the looks of the Elf’s chest, Legolas had incurred no injury, as nothing looked amiss. His skin was smooth and pale as always, his muscles were tautly sculpted with little fat lying atop them, per normal, and with no visible marks, Legolas’ torso showed no signs of mistreatment. Under Aragorn’s skilled and tender touch, the Elf’s flesh felt as it always did, as well – that is, Legolas’ skin was warm and soft while the muscles underneath were solid and strong. Seeing and feeling that his lover was well did nothing to halt the man’s growing dismay.

Liandra finally broke her silence by showing her own acumen, as she guessed just as had Aragorn, “Are you soon to start shivering and shaking as Aragorn here? It was Elise, wasn’t it?”

Looking up sharply from his inspection upon hearing the woman say this, Legolas cocked his head to the side and gave the healer a questioning lift of one dark amber eyebrow. Ere he could ask whom Elise was, Estel explained to the confused Elf, “The girl. The haunt. Her name is Elise. Liandra knew her and her family.”

“Knew her? I helped her mother birth her,” the elderly woman corrected. Crossing her arms over her chest, Liandra asked again, “Was it Elise? She touched you?”

Strangely, the Wood-Elf grinned and shook his head, though Aragorn held no hope that it was in answer to Liandra’s question. Legolas snickered a time or two in strange humor, ere he said the girl’s name quietly, as though testing it out aloud, “Elise. Elise,” he said again, this time more loudly, adding, “next time I speak to her, I know what to call her instead of ‘child’ and ‘young one,’ at least.”

“Greenleaf,” Estel whispered with portentous aggravation, as Aragorn felt that Legolas was evading the healer’s question – the answer to which the man wished he need not ever hear.

And thus, it was to Aragorn’s disappointment that Legolas took hold of the Adan’s hand, which had been absently caressing the Prince’s svelte belly, and looked only at Estel as he admitted, “Yes. She touched me.”

Aragorn stepped away, the back of his calves hitting the side of the cot, and fell heavily into sitting upon the thin mattress. Guilt surged through his shivering form. When he had asked Legolas to come into the wilds with him, never once had Aragorn thought that his doing so would eventuate in the Elf’s death. Of course, any time that the Ranger and Elf traveled together, whether pursuing Orcs, hunting game, or merely to seek out unexplored places, they took the chance that one or both of them could be injured or wounded fatally. In fact, when last the two had journeyed alone, they had been set upon by the merchants Sven and Cort, which had nearly cost the Elf his life. Estel was sick and more than likely soon to die, but he was mortal and doomed to die anyway – Legolas was not. He had never wanted for the Elf to share his fate, but even less so for the Prince to die like this – that is, away from his family, friends, and home, and all because of Aragorn.

Not needing to be told that the Adan held himself responsible for what happened and for the laegel’s now foreshortened lifespan, Legolas sat on the bed beside Aragorn, took the man’s hand, held it between his own, pressed it back to his still bare belly for a moment, and then let their entwined hands rest in his lap.

_He still feels warm, at least._

The man wondered if his Elven lover was soon to start shivering from the cold, as did he. Aragorn looked to Halbarad, who was giving his Chieftain a pointed look that went from him to Liandra, causing Estel to realize that he and Legolas were likely making clear their more than platonic relationship to Liandra, who stood watching all this with an incisive, assessing gaze. However, the Ranger no longer cared. If his and the Elf’s lives were now to be cut short, then he would not waste a moment pretending not to be utterly in love with the Prince; instead, he would spend every one of their last moments together showing his affection and devotement to the Elf.

Peevishly, for Legolas was offering them little actionable information, Halbarad stepped closer to the two lovers and asked the Elf, “What happened? Jakob is untouched then? What of the woman and her children? Were they touched, as well?”

Legolas took in a deep breath, let it loose slowly, and then explained, “No, the woman and her children, and Jakob, are all well. None of them were touched.”

Again, the Elf inhaled greatly, as if he could not get enough air. Being that a moment ago the Silvan had been inspecting his chest, Estel wondered if Elise hadn’t touched Legolas in the front of his torso, where his lungs laid, and if her doing so was making it difficult for the Prince to breathe or if it was the anxiety that had so often overwhelmed the Elf over the last several weeks – often for little to no discernible reason, though they had plenty of reason to be anxious right now.

Legolas stared down at where his and Aragorn’s hands were entwined in his lap, saying, “We were walking the path as planned when we heard a woman shrieking. We found the source of the shrieks in a house by an orchard. Inside, a woman stood with her two children. She screamed in fright, perhaps, but mostly in sorrow. Outside, in their backyard, laid the father, who died for their dog.”

Bewildered, Estel fought the urge to untangle his hand from Legolas’ hand to wrap his arm around the Prince, instead, and echoed, “Their dog?”

Shaking his head in disbelief, the laegel then nodded, saying, “Yes, he went outside to fetch the dog, which is when the haunt… Elise… must have touched him. He paid for that thoughtfulness with his life, it seems. While Jakob tried to calm the woman, I went outside to investigate. I could feel the haunt’s presence more keenly there, though I had felt it as we walked the path, as well,” he told them, looking briefly up to Liandra to gauge whether she understood his meaning, but given that Estel had told her of Legolas’ strange ability to sense the specter, she did not appear confused to hear this, and so the Wood-Elf continued, “There, near the apple trees behind the house, I saw her. But she was not alone. The newly dead man lying at my feet stood beside her, her hand in his."

Aragorn looked to his fellow Ranger and the elderly woman and saw his own consternation and mounting fear reflected back at him. None of them had expected this. _If she turns everyone she touches into haunts, does this mean that there are ghosts roaming outside who can do as she does, who can kill with a single touch?_ the man wondered in terrified perplexity. _Specters that Legolas cannot see, perhaps?_

Seemingly the only one of them with the wherewithal to continue to question the Prince, Halbarad asked Legolas with ever-increasing exasperation, “What of the torches? Did you have them lit? Did they drive the girl and the man away?”

“When first I went out, they stood beyond the light from the house, but they came nearer until they stood in Jakob’s shadow, who was in the doorway watching me. When Jakob moved, the man was in the luminance from the fires and lamps within the house. He disintegrated before my very eyes, smiling in relief as he did so,” the laegel stated. Aragorn could feel his lover’s sorrow to be telling them this, for the Elf had watched a man die, be turned into a bodiless spirit, and then die again in a different sense when his soul was released to Námo. “Jakob went back for his torch, as Elise was too close for me to light my own torch without inciting her to touch me. But upon his return, he swung the torch about her. The light fell upon her face, her body – everywhere. It had no effect upon her.”

_It would never be so simple. We were fools to think that it might be._

Infuriation rose within the Ranger, for he could damn well discern what the Elf was alluding to but not saying outright. Legolas had acted foolishly in going outside to check for the haunt’s presence, but Aragorn knew why the Silvan had done so – the Wood-Elf was willing to do whatever was necessary to save Estel’s life, and without qualm, Legolas was willing to risk his own life in the process. And now, his Greenleaf had forfeited his life for this self-appointed cause.

The Prince dithered for a moment by fiddling with the Ranger’s fingers, in which his own were still entangled. “I spoke to her. She heard me. She could not or would not speak, but she showed me what she wanted me to know. She showed me the lake where we stayed,” he told Aragorn, looking directly at the man as if the others in the room did not exist to him. “I saw what she saw at the time, felt what she felt. She watched us fishing. She wanted to join us, to have fun and be amongst friends. She is scared and lonely. I think she wants only to remedy that.”

Flabbergasted, after a huff of incredulity, Liandra finally broke her long silence in saying mordantly, “She kills her kith and kin to have a friend?”

“I think so, yes. She is just a child, remember, and wont to act and think like one. Death does not age the soul,” the Elf argued mildly, standing up for the haunt without even being aware of his doing so. Legolas spared Liandra a glower before he began again to Estel, lowering his head to look at their hands once again while saying, “While talking to her, I may have convinced her to stop touching people, to stop hurting people, by promising to try to aid her. I told her that friends of ours were coming, and that with them, we would find some way to help her, to return her to her family and friends. And she believed me, I think. I hope.”

Aragorn cast aside the opinion of the rational part of his mind, which questioned the Elf’s story. Clearly, the Wood-Elf was not hallucinating, this was no trick, and he knew this from his own experience and from the dead bodies that Elise left behind; however, nothing in the man’s life had ever prepared him for this kind of situation, and his mind reeled to make sense of it all. Leaning in towards the Prince and inciting the Wood-Elf to look at him again, Aragorn had to know, “Why did she touch you then, Greenleaf?”

Once more, the Elf fell silent as he thought of how to explain himself. A shudder swept over the Silvan’s body; while Liandra and Halbarad likely thought it was the same shivering that had consumed Aragorn’s body, Aragorn believed his Elven lover was shuddering in revulsion of the memory of the girl’s touch. Estel had barely felt Elise’s fingers upon his own flesh that night by the creek and had not known what was happening at the time; he wondered what it must have felt like for Legolas to see the girl’s hand as it came towards him, knowing that it brought death.

When the silence grew long and Estel thought to put his question to the Prince again, Legolas murmured quietly, “When trying to make her realize the error of her ways, of trying to explain to her in a way a child can understand that she was killing innocent people, I told her when she touched you, Estel, that she had doomed you to die. I told her that in doing so, she made me feel as sad and alone as she feels. And because I had just told her to be kind and good, she touched me, thinking that she was being both kind and good. She did it so that we would both die and become haunts, just like her. So that we could be together, and thus not be sad and alone.”

Aragorn pressed his eyes closed to stem the moisture gathering there. Briefly, he considered the idea of spending an eternity with Legolas, both of them mere specters, bodiless and without purpose. It might seem a pleasant thought to be with the Elf forever, but not in this way. He would never want that for Legolas. They had little choice in the matter now, though; they were both soon to face this fate.

 _If this happens, we will walk into the nearest light the moment it does,_ the Ranger pledged. He opened his eyes to find that Legolas was watching him, which only caused him to close his eyes again, for he did not want to see the resignation in the Prince’s gaze. The others were speechless in their disbelief, it seemed, for neither Liandra nor Halbarad responded to the Elf’s explication. After a long while of silence, the village’s healer cleared her throat to gain their attention.

“Come then,” Liandra finally ordered, sounding so much like Elrond with her demanding tone that Estel opened his eyes at once while Legolas did not hesitate to comply as she ordered, “Stand and let me look at you.”

Unwillingly, he released the Elf’s hand so that Legolas could be looked over by the village healer. Disconsolately, he viewed as Liandra did as he had done only a short time ago. Liandra ran her hands along the Silvan’s chest, prodding and inspecting the flawless flesh of the Prince’s torso in the scant light coming through the opening on the far end of where they were assembled, ere she shook her head and stepped back.

“I know nothing of the art of healing the Eldar, but you appear just fine to me,” Liandra grumbled discontentedly. Liandra would rather have sickness with symptoms and herbal remedies than what they faced now – a nameless curse with no precedent and thus no known cure.

“I feel fine,” the Elf told the woman.

Over the many months since first he and the Elf had been accosted in the forest by the merchants, Aragorn had heard Legolas say this same thing time and time again; his saying this now meant nothing to Estel, for the words truly meant nothing to Aragorn. When given a moment alone with Legolas, he would find out how the Silvan actually felt.

From the outer room came the increasing voices of the agitated women there arguing and whispering as they worriedly discussed what was occurring. Hearing this, Halbarad sighed and told Liandra, “Will you come to help me pacify the women? They will feel better if you speak to them.”

The herbalist nodded her assent and the pair left the ensconcement without further discussion, leaving Aragorn and Legolas alone. The Silvan sat upon the edge of the desk, crossed his arms over his bare chest, and while staring at the floor beneath his feet, told Estel, “I didn’t want to say this in front of the woman, but Jakob suggested that the only reason you and I are not yet dead is because I am Elf-kind and you carry the blood of the Eldar, diluted though it may be. Every human who she has touched died instantly – except you. I don’t know that he is right, but it is a strange coincidence, if it is not the reason.”

“I’m not sure if that is of benefit to know or not, except that if it keeps you alive until my father’s people come with knowledge, then I hope it is true,” he answered. Running his hands through his hair, Estel then held his head in his hands for a moment, before he looked up to the Elf.

Legolas was avoiding returning the Adan’s gaze, which unnerved the man immensely. He scooted to the edge of the bed, took the Elf by the hand, and pulled Legolas until he stood before where Aragorn sat on the bed. As they had done hours earlier, the Ranger wrapped his arms about the Elf’s waist and pressed his face into the Prince’s belly, while in response, Legolas rested his arms across Aragorn’s shoulders, his fingers threading through the Adan’s wavy hair.

_I hope Ada sends aid soon._


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little something just in time for Valentine's Day. Enjoy.

Legolas gingerly ran his hands along the human’s nape, shoulders, and upper back, massaging Aragorn’s tensed muscles. He knew his lover well enough to realize without being told that the man was ridden with guilt and fear. Seeking to assuage this, the Silvan quietly promised the Ranger with all the conviction he truly felt, saying, “We will find some way to end this strange sickness, Estel, I vow to you. When Minyatar’s emissaries arrive, they will have some knowledge that will aid us, or perhaps if I talk to the girl herself, she may be able to reverse what she has done. This is not over yet. I am not losing you, not like this, and not this easily.”

He felt as Aragorn’s body strained further under his loving hands, while Estel murmured against the Elf’s bare belly, his breath hot and moist against the Prince’s flesh, “No, Greenleaf. You tried to talk some sense into her tonight and only incited her to curse you with the same as that which she cursed me. There is no point in speaking to her, is there? She may only hasten your death, and I would spend my every last moment with you.” The man sighed in unusual resignation – unusual in that Estel would normally never give in so easily, as he seemed to be doing now – and told the Prince sullenly, “At least when we die, I will die first. That is of some comfort.”

“Stop speaking as if your death is certain,” the laegel chastised the man in a voice harsh with anger and sorrow. Despite his belief in this certainty of his own death, as well as Aragorn’s, Legolas would not listen to the man talk like this. He grabbed the human by his hair and pulled Estel’s head back and away from where it was pressed into the Elf’s belly. This was not particularly painful, but Aragorn looked up to the Prince in surprise to be treated so forcefully. “Stop, Estel,” the Wood-Elf warned with a shake of the man’s head by his hold of Aragorn’s wavy hair. “I will not let you die. I did not fight off my grief, expel the suasive voice of the scar, live through the merchants and Mithfindl’s torture, and endure my father’s beatings and violent opinions about being with you just to roll over and accept your death – not like this, not when we have finally found the chance to be together. It hurts me to hear you are so willing to give up on us.”

With his whiskered jaw hanging slightly open, his silver eyes wide with surprise, the Ranger responded at once, “That is not what I meant, meleth nin.” Aragorn’s hands, which had been loosely clasped together at the small of the Elf’s back, released each other to begin roaming along the laegel’s torso, where they swept upwards to just under the Silvan’s shoulder blades before sliding down to the swell of the Prince’s rear in absentminded, affectionate possession. “I only meant that I am not willing to risk your life further, despite your being so willing to do so just to see my pitifully short life extended. You broke your promise to me,” the Ranger inveighed bitterly, and not without some ire for the Elf, telling him, “You promised not to touch her, not to approach her. I know why you did so, but please, Greenleaf – I would not lose you. My life is not a fair trade for your life. And if you go out seeking Elise to halt my demise, then you only bring yours about, which will be the end of me, anyway, since you are the only one capable of seeing her and thus stopping her.”

Aragorn’s hands finally stopped roving; they remained just at the curve on the Elf’s thigh where his shapely arse met his lithe legs, with the man’s fingers curled around the inside of the Silvan’s upper thighs. At the reminder of his broken promise, the Wood-Elf looked away from his lover’s upturned face, for Legolas felt shame and could not meet the man’s gaze. Yes, he had promised Estel all those things – not to approach the haunt, not to interact with her, and to light his torch at the least provocation – and he had broken every single facet of this promise. Legolas wondered in disbelief, _Does he not know? Does he not know that I love him more than my life itself, and would gladly forfeit my life to see that his is long and hale?_ Estel was right of one thing, at least; if the Elf was not more careful next time, he may indeed hasten his own death, which would prove to end the single advantage they had in dealing with Elise, since as the man said, Legolas was the only one capable of communicating with and seeing the girl.

Aloud, the Prince merely hinted at his desperate thoughts when he whispered fiercely to the Adan, “There will be no life for me without you in it. I will do whatever it takes to save you. And if there is no cure, if we are both destined to die, then I will be glad to die right along with you, Estel. This promise I make and will keep above all other promises you or anyone else might ask of me.”

This did not pacify Aragorn at all, of course. The Adan let go of his gentle grip of the Elf’s arse and raised his arms to take hold of the laegel’s face, instead. By this grasp, he turned the Silvan’s head back towards him though Legolas looked just over the man’s shoulder rather than at his troubled visage; Estel told the Prince, “Hush. You frighten me when you say such things.”

Legolas bent at the waist and leant downwards to press a kiss upon the Adan’s worry-lined brow. “I speak only the truth. Do not ask me to give you false mollifications.”

They remained as they were, their conversation lulling while each thought of what needed to be said, but when the Silvan heard the sounds of approaching, booted feet, he unwillingly stepped back and away from Estel, who dropped his arms to his sides so that the two lovers no longer appeared as if they were in the midst of an intimate moment, as they had been. Not a moment later, at the opening between the last bookcase and the wall, there came a slight squeaking sound as a chair was shoved within the gap. Soon, Halbarad was standing upon the seat of the chair, one of his own blankets in hand. Wondering what the elder Ranger was doing and undesirous to continue their conversation with anyone else listening, both Legolas and Estel paused in their distressing discussion to watch as the older Adan hung the blanket from nails already driven into the beams overhead. He then let the blanket fall, which in effect created a barrier from the ceiling to the floor. The dim room was now nearly pitch black since the thick wool blanket shut out all illumination coming from the schoolroom beyond. The tall bookcases, which reached almost to the roof, allowed in only a faint light in the slim space between their tops and the ceiling overhead. Suddenly pushing aside the blanket, Halbarad then entered with a lit lamp in one hand and Aragorn’s forgotten bundle of blankets in the other, which he had obtained from the rocking chair where his Chieftain had left them.

Halbarad gave Estel and the Prince a grim smile, telling them, “I thought you two might want to sleep with a modicum of seclusion. It is hard to rest around here with the noise and the light, I know. And being that you both have already been touched by Elise, I didn’t think the dark would matter much.”

He handed his bundle of blankets to Legolas and then sat the oil lamp upon the desk, though he turned it down low until it barely cast a light. Although in the next room there were candles, lamps, and the fireplace to keep the room fully lit, in here, where the two lovers would rest, there was no longer a need for such safekeeping, being that they were both beyond such precautions.

“Thank you,” Aragorn told his elder. Clearing his throat, he asked Halbarad, “Did Liandra calm the women?”

“Yes, she did, thank Eru. She has a way with words, that one. She managed to make them think that we are all safe and well, and answered their every question without managing to tell them a single thing. I would swear she was an Elf, what with her hemming and hawing and fancy talk, saying plenty but simultaneously saying nothing at all,” the elder man told his Chieftain. However, upon realizing Legolas might take offense to hearing his kind being spoken of in such a way, the dour man regarded the Wood-Elf with contrition and made to apologize.

However, Legolas settled his rear against the edge of the desk, crossed his arms over his bare chest, and laughed lightly at Halbarad’s observation. He agreed, “You just described half of my father’s councilors.”

Halbarad smiled weakly in return before without preamble, he began a different apology, saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I truly thought the torches would work. If I had known that you would be touched, Legolas…”

With a wave of his hand, the Silvan forefended the elder Adan’s continuance. “It was a risk of which I was well aware. And besides, to be honest, I am at fault for placing myself in the situation where I was lax in judgment and vigilance. Do not apologize.”

Although he seemed less than pacified by the laegel’s attempts to make him feel better, Halbarad smiled briefly, gratefully, and nodded. The Ranger rubbed at the silver whiskers adorning his throat and then squeezed the bridge of his nose for a moment, ere he told them, “You two sleep if you can. I will stay awake to keep watch for the rest of the night, and sleep on the morrow when Jakob returns.”

“Thank you, Halbarad,” Aragorn told the older man, who was already on his way out of the ensconcement. They watched as Halbarad fiddled with the wool blanket until it was settled to cover the gap sufficiently, and once hearing Halbarad’s booted feet as he walked away from the entry, the two turned their attention back to the other.

“Can you sleep, Estel?” he asked the human. Legolas did not feel as if he could find any rest, but he wanted very much to crawl into the bed with the Adan, curl up in front of him, and feel the warm assurance of Aragorn’s body aligned with his own.

It seemed that the man wanted the same, for he said as much. “No, I doubt it. But I would not mind resting under the blankets with you, if you will join me, Greenleaf.”

Their argument was not yet over, but both were willing to put it aside for now. Unaware of how frantic and tired he looked, Legolas wondered at the man’s easy compliance, though he did not question the Adan. Instead, as he had earlier in the day and after tossing the bundle of blankets to the cot beside the human, the Elf knelt before the sitting Ranger, unbuckled Aragorn’s belt and then his quiver, placing both upon the desk beside his own, the lamp, and their bags, and then removed Estel’s boots for him. Once done, he stood to make use of the chair and began unbuckling his own boots while Estel spread the blankets out over the bed, one by one, until they needed only to slide under them. Aragorn removed his cloak, his tunic, and even his undershirt; Legolas watched him do this after he had climbed onto the thin straw cot, his arms opening in invitation when the Adan was done so that he could accept the man into his snug embrace. But when ready to join the Elf, Aragorn crawled in behind the Prince – rather than having the laegel hold the man, as they had slept earlier, Aragorn wanted to wrap the Wood-Elf in his arms now, which was how they typically slept. Legolas did not mind this idea in the least.

_I cannot imagine not sleeping without feeling his beard scratching my neck, or his calloused fingers upon my skin, or hearing his contented sighs as he sleeps beside me._ Pushing himself harder against the man behind him, Legolas twisted his torso so that he could feel the crisp, light pelt of hair covering the Ranger’s chest against his back. He closed his eyes briefly; when shut, Legolas could still see the hauntingly inflamed gaze of the girl’s specter. The sudden imagining of Estel appearing as she did – the man’s body diaphanous and monochrome, which Legolas would then never be able to touch again; Estel’s face wearing a similar despair as had the face of the newly dead Adan’s ghost from the orchard tonight; and his lover’s life over, his faer lingering until happenstance or design cast him into luminance and dissolving his faer like salt in water. He quickly opened his eyes to dispel the image. A quick shiver overtook him. _I cannot imagine life without Estel. I can hardly remember what life was like before meeting him._

Under the blankets, the Ranger was absentmindedly stroking the laegel’s chest, just where Elise had thrust her hands inside of his torso; not out of lust but out of the mere need to feel the Prince’s body, as if to assure himself by this touch that the Wood-Elf was well, Aragorn’s calloused fingers played over Legolas’ smooth skin. Even though they had only been lying abed for a short while, the Ranger’s shivering had subsided, at least, such that the Elf thought Aragorn might be able to sleep now that his whole body no longer shuddered from the cold seeming to spring from within the man, rather than from without.

“Sleep, Estel,” he soothed, wishing for the Adan to rest so that he could maintain his lover’s well-being as much as was possible. “Tomorrow is soon enough to figure all of this out. Jakob will come in the morning, and with the healer, we can all sit down and speak of what to do next.”

“I cannot even think to sleep, Greenleaf. I am too wound up,” the Adan complained, but then hurried to say, as if thinking that Legolas might insist they rise if the human had no intention of sleeping, “but I am content to lie here beside you to share your warmth. Moreover, if you are soon to start shivering as I do, then it is just as important for you to rest while you can.”

By the lake, before any of these recent troubles surfaced, the man and Elf had no trouble taking regular rest because they had worn each other out repeatedly both with the exercise they took in hunting, fishing, smoking venison, collecting and drying herbs, sewing and repairing their clothing and satchels, washing and cleaning up themselves and their belongings, practicing their archery and swordsmanship, collecting firewood, and the other menial, daily chores that sustained an encampment. By far the easiest way to wear out the human, however, was a task of a different sort that neither Elf nor Adan thought of as a chore.

_I wonder if he can be quiet so as not to arouse suspicion from the women next door,_ the Prince thought, smiling widely at his scheme. It would take some convincing, he was sure, but the Wood-Elf was eager to see that his Ranger was relaxed, happy, and refreshed come the morning. And so, as if trying to find a more comfortable position, Legolas writhed a bit in front of the man, and thereby ground his supple rear against Estel’s groin. At once, the man inhaled sharply and pressed his forehead against the back of Legolas’ neck, but he did not yet seek to stop Legolas, for the human did not yet realize that the Elf was intentionally trying to arouse him. Again, the Silvan slid his rear against the Ranger’s groin, his smile growing as he felt the ever-insatiable man’s shaft as it began to respond to his avid attempt to arouse it.

“Greenleaf, can you not be still?” Estel groused, thinking that the laegel was unaware of the effect he was having upon the Adan. However, when the Wood-Elf sniggered softly, Aragorn outright groaned, as he then comprehended what Legolas was doing. “Do not be cruel. Do not start something that we cannot finish, meleth nin.”

“And why can we not finish it?” he rejoindered in like, whispery tone, such that no one beyond the blankets under which they laid could possibly hear their words. “The women are asleep. Halbarad is sitting by the fire on the far side of the room. And if you can be quiet, we can most certainly finish what I have started.”

Lasciviously, the Wood-Elf ground his rear in tantalizingly slow circles upon the human’s growing need, once more causing Aragorn to inhale quickly. It pleased the Elf to no end to feel upon his arse the proof of his ability to arouse his lover just from the friction of his body against the man’s form.

Still, however, the Adan was not convinced and contended weakly, his will to argue against this already breaking down, “It is inappropriate.”

“Since when have you cared about modesty and propriety?” he teased tenderly. He knew that his gambit was working, for Aragorn’s hands, which before had been stroking the Elf affectionately, were now caressing Legolas’ honed belly and muscled chest with the desire to avail themselves of the laegel’s flesh. It never took much for the Elf to make the Adan want him, as Estel always seemed ready to enjoy Legolas’ body, but the Prince thought now how best to cause his Ranger to capitulate completely, and so said what he knew would cause the Adan to succumb, telling Estel, “I want you, meleth nin. I need to feel you moving inside of me. I want to feel your heat, your seed inside of me, Estel,” he spoke in an enticing, lewd murmur.

Against the back of his neck, Aragorn panted in short and hot breaths. The Wood-Elf slithered his hand behind his back, sliding along the bare skin of the Ranger’s navel, and reached for the man’s lap; the moment that his palm pressed against Estel’s sex through the cloth of his trousers, Legolas knew he had won. Against his hand, he could feel the Ranger’s shaft as it began to thicken. He did not wait for the human to agree to his amative yearning, but slipped his hand under the waist of Aragorn’s trousers so he could feel the Adan’s shaft without hindrance of the cloth. Curling his fingers around the Ranger’s cock, he spryly fondled his lover’s need, his thumb finding its way to the head of Aragorn’s shaft, where he grazed the slit thereon, which was already seeping seed, so eager was the man already.

“You are a wicked Elf,” Estel kidded with a subdued snort of amusement, though this soon turned into an equally muffled, lecherous groan when Legolas’ deft fingers squeezed upon his shaft. Aragorn pressed a kiss to the laegel’s shoulder, though his lips soon latched onto the skin there, suckling suggestively; his hands, however, took to kneading the Silvan’s torso, his fingers abrading the velvety peaks upon the Elf’s chest.

Legolas had started this – he would be the one to set the tempo for it, as well. Long though he did that they were alone so that they could take their time in finding comfort and pleasure, the Elf knew that he would have to move quickly, lest Aragorn suddenly doubt the Silvan’s reasons for instigating this, or before Halbarad or Liandra took a notion to come in and check on them. For his part, although his own lust was roused, the Prince was not yet ready to receive his lover’s length, but he did not care. Being that he did not want to cease his encouragement of the man’s hardening shaft, Legolas one-handedly unlaced his trousers; noticing what the Elf was doing, Aragorn forsook his task of hungrily fondling the Silvan’s chest and instead aided Legolas in divesting the Elf of this barrier. They did not remove them entirely, but yanked the cloth down to the Elf’s knees. Once done, Aragorn worked to do the same to his own trousers, the Silvan’s hand ever upon the man, where it worked Estel’s shaft in the practiced, familiar motions that Legolas knew would keep the Adan rapt and excited.

A loud popping sound from the schoolroom beyond, caused by the wood burning in the fireplace, startled both Elf and Adan out of their entrancement. This slight pause and the reminder that there were people in the room on the other side of the bookcases interrupted Estel’s single-minded lustiness. Aragorn began again to have doubts. “Greenleaf,” he murmured directly into the Elf’s ear, sounding very much as if he would next tell the laegel that they ought to stop.

But Legolas was quick to respond. Using his hold of it to slide the human’s cock against his now exposed rear, the Elf summarily ended the man’s locution. As if instinctively seeking out his lover’s blisteringly warm, tight entrance of its own accord, Aragorn’s adamantine shaft twitched and his hips pitched forward. Whatever argument the Ranger had been intent on making was forgotten. Legolas wedged Aragorn’s shaft between the halves of his arse and shifted his hips upwards, downwards, and then upwards again, creating a cadenced stroking of the man’s cock to distract him. Having now forgotten about all else but the Elf before him, Aragorn once more began pawing and pinching at the incarnadine buds of flesh upon Legolas’ chest, both of which hardened under this enjoyable consideration.

While it ran the length of the room, the ensconcement was so narrow in width that Legolas could reach the small desk without having to move from the bed. He caught the strap to the Ranger’s satchel in one hand and pulled it to him, while his other hand remained upon the man’s shaft to aid in its gentle manipulation by the silken flesh between the globes of his rear. Legolas fumbled inside the pack until he found the phial of oil, which he uncapped rapidly. He removed his hand from Aragorn’s shaft long enough to pour some of the oil in his palm; before the aroused Adan revived his senses or found the wherewithal even to think to protest, Legolas quickly reached behind him again to slick the Ranger’s shaft thoroughly. He ran his oiled fingers between the spread halves of his arse, allowing a single slicked finger to breach his entrance momentarily, but did not prepare himself further ere he grasped the man’s cock at its base. In willing abandonment, Estel allowed this in quiet submission, all the while still caressing his lover’s body and his mouth alternating between pressing kisses and suckling what skin he could reach upon Legolas’ back and neck. With the head of Aragorn’s thick, rigid shaft nudging against the aperture to his body, Legolas wasted no time in attempting to relax his innermost muscles while simultaneously guiding his lover’s cock inside of him. A bolt of pure pain raced through him at this sudden intrusion, but the Prince did not cease until the bulbous head of Estel’s manhood was fully inside him.

“Greenleaf,” the wailful Adan whispered.

So caught up in his pleasure was Aragorn, so trusting was the Ranger of Legolas’ care not to hurt himself, and – being that because of how Legolas laid and because the Elf’s arm blocked his ability to reach the Wood-Elf’s shaft – so unaware was he that the Elf was not as aroused as was he, Estel remained passive during all this.

Bit by bit, he slid his rear closer to the man’s groin, and thus Aragorn’s cock farther inside him. His body’s opening spasmed painfully against this intrusion, but Legolas did not stop. He desired Estel but he did not desire completion. More than the upswell of pleasure that could eventuate in his own release, Legolas wanted what the human gave him now – that is, intimacy, nearness, and the knowledge that he could bring Aragorn carnal gratification. Once the human’s shaft was seated fully within the Elf, Legolas removed his hand from it to grip instead the side of the cot for leverage so he could help the Adan by piercing himself upon the man’s eager arousal. In doing so, he finally removed the impediment to Aragorn being capable of touching the Prince’s cock to bring him pleasure, as well; thus, when the man slid his hand over the Wood-Elf’s hip to try to stimulate the Prince, a soon distressed Estel found that Legolas showed no signs of excitement at all.

“Greenleaf?” the Adan grumbled softly, worriedly, and grabbed hold of the Elf’s hip to keep him from moving as he asked in a soft susurrus, “I am not hurting you, am I? You are well? Does it not feel good?”

“I am fine, meleth nin,” he assured the man. He pushed at the hand staying his movement, as he wanted very much as he had told Aragorn – he wanted to feel the human moving inside of him and to feel his seed within his body. When Estel would not release the laegel’s hip, Legolas tried again to assuage Aragorn, saying, “Please. Let me feel you.”

The Adan made as if to pull away or out of the laegel’s body, beginning to say, “But Legolas – ”

“Do not stop,” he demanded in interruption, his body struggling upon the shaft housed within him of its own accord, as each minute movement gently abraded the rise within him and brought him bliss, though of a different kind than what the human was experiencing. Finally managing to pry Aragorn’s hand from his waist so that he could agitate his lower half away from and then against the Ranger’s navel, Legolas did not lie when he explained, “It does not hurt. It feels wonderful, Estel.”

Aragorn again tried to stimulate the laegel’s cock, but Legolas again pushed the Ranger’s questing hand away from his flaccid shaft ere he shifted how he laid on his side before the Adan. Slipping a foot free from the confines of his pushed down trousers, the Elf lifted his top leg to spread his body wider, bent his upper half away from Aragorn and this pushed his lower half hard onto the man’s cock. Growling low in his throat, Estel responded by taking hold of the laegel’s hip again, though this time he did not do so to stop the Elf’s movement. Aragorn pulled the Prince to him before pushing Legolas away slightly, and then pulled the Elf to him again, while the Silvan aided the human in this endeavor by his hold of the edge of the cot. Legolas bit his lip to hold in the hiss determined to escape him – he did not want Aragorn to think he was in pain, because truly, the change in angle caused his lover’s shaft to hit upon the receptive swell inside his body and caused bright pinpoints of light to flash before the laegel’s closed eyes. After several more hard and deeply penetrating thrusts, the Adan soundlessly spilled his seed inside the Elf, filling Legolas with the evidence of his ability to bring his lover bodily satisfaction.

Breathing raggedly, Aragorn took hold of Legolas’ torso and heaved the Elf back to him, such that they laid now as they had before, with the Ranger’s lightly pelted chest flush to the laegel’s sinewy back and the man’s arms wrapped tightly around the Elf to bring him as close as possible. Legolas hugged the Adan’s arms to him, wishing that he could somehow just meld to the human forever.

“Being inside you feels like returning to a warm house on a cold night,” the man breathlessly whispered into the Elf’s ear, causing the Silvan to chuckle softly at the odd compliment.

Of greater satisfaction to the Elf than the physical pleasure he had forsaken this night was the pleasure he felt upon hearing Aragorn’s words. Legolas twisted his neck, his own mouth seeking the Ranger’s mouth, which had uttered the adulating praise he had longed to hear. Sensing his lover’s desire, Aragorn lifted his upper half and leant forward, such that although they were at an odd angle, their lips could join as were their bodies joined. Lewdly, the Adan’s tongue did to the Elf’s orifice what his shaft had done to the opening between his legs, spearing Legolas’ mouth in a similarly rough and pleasing manner.

When finally they parted for air, Estel attempted to pull his shaft out of the Elf, saying, “Let me taste you, Greenleaf. Let me please you,” he requested, offering to bring the Prince gratification in return for the gratification the Prince had given him.  

But the Wood-Elf had what he wanted right now – his lover inside him, beside him, and he wanted nothing else from Estel. Rapidly, the laegel grabbed the man’s hip by reaching behind him and thus kept Aragorn from scooting back, but also clenched his innermost muscles down upon the human’s slowly softening shaft to try to retain it inside of his pleasantly aching opening. “Do not move, Estel. Stay like this, please,” he asked of the man.

“Greenleaf,” Aragorn tried to argue. The Ranger did not like the feeling of having taken from the Prince without offering anything in return, Legolas knew. “Do you not want – ”

The Wood-Elf interrupted, their conversation spoken entirely in barely audible whispers, “No, this is what I want. I just want to feel this, meleth nin,” he tried to explain to the confused and vexed human.

He could not speak to the Adan of how he had felt the girl haunt’s cold fingers wriggling inside his chest, of the terror he felt in knowing acutely that they were both soon to die, nor of the growing numbness of his flesh; telling Estel any of this might only confuse the man as to why the Prince had desired him or might cause Aragorn to believe that sorrow or fear had caused the Elf to seek this intimacy, when all that the Elf wanted was to counteract the strange sensation brought about by the haunt’s rapacious touch of him with the Ranger’s loving intrusion, to share this intimacy before one of them died or before the Elf became so numbed by the growing unfeelingness that he could no longer feel the  man’s presence inside his body. Perhaps Estel felt similarly. Perhaps that was why he had succumbed so easily to Legolas’ attentions in bringing about this result. Perhaps Aragorn knew that they might never have the chance to be together like this again.

“Please, Estel. Just lie here with me and do not move,” he beseeched his lover.

Turning his head to look over his shoulder, he came face to face to the Ranger, who had been trying to peer into the Wood-Elf’s face to ascertain that the Prince was truly as well as he claimed. He gave the man a smile evincing his reverence and love, a smile that never ceased to make Estel smile back at him. Unbeknownst to the Silvan, this was the smile that Aragorn thought of as his alone, since Legolas had never looked at another being with the same adoration as he did Estel. Aragorn leant forward to press a kiss to the corner of the Wood-Elf’s grinning mouth, but upon feeling the soft and welcoming lips under his own, the Ranger soon changed the focus of this chaste buss and let his lips linger upon the Elf’s lips. The man seized hold of the Silvan’s jaw whilst he plundered the Wood-Elf’s mouth yet again. When done, Aragorn peppered kisses along Legolas’ cheek, his jaw, his neck, and then as he shifted to align his body with the Silvan’s again, he kissed the Elf’s nape, shoulders, and back.

“Just stay like this,” he repeated, clasping harder the Adan’s strong arms where they wrapped around his torso.

Aragorn did not respond, but nor did he try to pull away another time. Instead, the Adan released a contented, tired sigh, and again, Legolas was satisfied by this, as he knew now that after his release Estel would be able to sleep. The Wood-Elf focused his whole being upon the man swathed over him and submerged inside him. He let his devotion to Estel drown out all other feelings – his fear for the human’s life, his anxiety over how to keep Aragorn alive, and his helplessness in saving the man. When there was nothing of the Elf but his love for Estel, Legolas felt as if his chest would burst with adoration, affection, and admiration for the Adan.

Amongst the Eldar, when two Elves bonded, the faers of a couple were joined in a manner different from the marriage of two Edain. Elven faers were linked forever, even after death, which was why the demise of a spouse caused such grief that the living lover sometimes did not survive his or her mate’s passing. Legolas had heard tales before of how bonded couples could feel the joy, pain, and fear of their other halves. They shared the light of their faers such that should one half of that couple’s bonded soul begin to dim, the other’s light might burn brighter and bring their loved one away from the gloom and back to brightness.

It was with these stories in the forefront of his thinking that Legolas considered, _If Jakob is right, and Estel still alive because he has distant Elven heritage, then perhaps he has enough of the Eldar in him to allow our faers to be connected, just as if we were truly bonded. I hope it is so,_ he prayed, his heart set upon what might be a suicidal course for him, should it prove to work.

If Elise were sapping the vitality from the souls of those whom she touched, then she was the cause of Estel’s faer’s slow fade from his rhaw. But if the stories were true of Elven bond mates, and if Legolas could help it, he would use his own faer to replenish the man’s dimming light. Yes, his own brilliance was darkening the same as was Estel’s, since he had been touched by Elise, as well, but Legolas disregarded this. He would pour all of himself into the man and fill the Ranger’s faer in a way different than and more intimate than how Aragorn filled him now, for while Estel’s shaft glutted the Elf’s rhaw, the Elf would glut Estel’s faer with what he had left of his own faer – tattered and piceous as it was.

After a while, the man’s breathing slowed into the regular, steady, and soft sounds to which the Elf had grown accustomed. With Estel’s shaft still buried to the hilt inside him, Legolas willfully let his faer wane while his lover’s faer waxed. He did not allow himself to fall into sleep, as he desired to keep watch over his lover until dawn came.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, I uploaded this but forgot to actually post it. Anyway, here it is. And, I've got a few things going on that might keep me from posting for a couple weeks. But I shall be back. Enjoy, and take care.

He dreamt of his Elven lover. He dreamt of the morning that they had left the lake, of how he had used minted water to heighten his and Legolas’ pleasure by supplanting their normal oil with the slippery, mentholated water instead. In his sleep, the Ranger shifted his groin, which was becoming hard with the need his dream resurrected within him, only to find that a much more real and captivating gratification could be found in his waking life. His slumber began to fade as his body responded instinctively to the subtle friction upon his shaft – friction caused by his restless twitching, for his movements mirrored his actions in his dream, where his dream-self was trying to drive his cock deeply inside his lover. He found himself caught precisely between wakefulness and his enslumbered envisagement, making his mind unable to ascertain which was the real source of his pleasure – the laegel who sat upon the man’s lap and rode him with loving abandon, his raucous cries lost to the wilderness around them as he took delectation from the equally delighted human, or the laegel lying before him, warm and welcoming and quiet, and so very much tangible. When the dream-Legolas shot his seed out over the man’s chest, Aragorn tried to bring his arm up to catch the dripping, liquid mark of the Elf’s pleasure to bring to his mouth to taste it, but he found his arm caught under the real Legolas’ body.

And with that, the human woke fully, the knowledge of where he was and what he was about slow to resume control over his lust-muddled mind; moreover, he found himself feeling refreshingly well rested. His only complaint this morning was that his arms hurt from having been wound around Legolas for several hours without repositioning, since his deep sleep had kept him immobile. Most surprisingly to the Adan, he felt wonderfully warm; this welcomed warmth seemed to be centered upon his groin. As he blinked his eyes to free them of the vestiges of sleep, the Adan realized why this was so and why he had been awoken by the pleasurable sensations of his dream, which had felt so real to him – his shaft was still housed inside the Wood-Elf’s clasping, tight entrance. Regardless of the ache of his arms, he did not want to move and disrupt his or the Silvan’s temporary serenity, and so did not try to disengage his shaft or his arms from the Elf for the moment.

 _I cannot believe we slept like this,_ the Adan suddenly worried as his mind began the sluggish work of clearing of slumber, for he thought, _Greenleaf may be sore today._ With that concern in mind, Aragorn summarily decided it best that he try to remove himself from the Elf as soon as possible. Gingerly, thinking that he might not wake the Silvan if he moved slowly enough, Aragorn tried to scoot his lower half away from the Wood-Elf, but the moment that his cock shifted inside the Prince’s body, Estel groaned softly, for his already hardening member only firmed further with the friction. Being that he thought the silent Elf was asleep, the man chastised himself, _Wonderful. I cannot wake Greenleaf like this. He might think he is being maltreated._

But the Silvan was not asleep, and when Legolas felt as his human lover tried again to pull free of his body, the Elf clamped down with his inner muscles upon Aragorn’s shaft, saying aloud and surprising the Ranger with the forced cheer in which he said, “What do you think you are doing? I didn’t say you could move yet, human.”

Estel chuckled quietly against the back of the laegel’s neck ere he planted a kiss upon the soft, smooth, and snowy flesh there. “As much as I would like to lie abed with you all day like this, you will not be able to walk if we do,” he teased in return. He was glad that the Wood-Elf was in a playful mood, even if it didn’t seem entirely authentic. It would not do for either of them to despair over their circumstances – not when it might be the last of their days. “And after the dream I just had of you, if I don’t move, I will be in a very sore state, as well, and likely unable to walk either.”

The Silvan’s body stirred a bit with inaudible laughter – or at least, Aragorn hoped it to be laughter moving the Prince’s body, and not the same shuddering that the Ranger had endured over the past day or so. It that moment, the reality of their situation hit the man full force. One or both of them might die at any instant. The deaths of the villagers had been immediate, after all. While their own demises seemed to be slow for now, when the last wisp of their faers was unfettered from their rhaws, Aragorn or Legolas might not even know that their end was upon them until they toppled over, never to move again, never to touch the other again, and never able to say goodbye. He could truly only hope that he died first. It was a selfish thing for which to wish, but Estel could not imagine being forced to bury or burn the Silvan, to watch as soil was cast over his lover’s fair face, or as his lithe and beautiful body was incinerated like nothing more than fire logs.

 _I hope Jakob is right in saying that Greenleaf’s being an Elf and my Elven heritage has increased our time before dying. Just let me die after him, if we are to die,_ he thought again as he had several times over the past day. However, Aragorn was also reminded as he was each time his thoughts strayed to this eventuality, _But with my death will come Greenleaf’s death. Perhaps it would be better that he die first so he would not have to suffer my loss, should the haunt’s curse not take him soon after and he thus be forced to feel the sorrow my death will surely bring him._

Feeling as if his lying there abed was wasting time better spent trying to help himself and the Wood-Elf, or if nothing else, time they could be spending together, speaking or reminiscing, walking or bathing, or his doing something other than stewing in his morbid thoughts, the Ranger buried his nose into the hair just above the Silvan’s nape. It was here, Aragorn had found, that the bright and aromatic smell of his lover’s body seemed strongest, and the man loved the smell of the Elf – who was still fragrant of pines and citrus despite not having had a bath since leaving the lake and despite having carried Elise’s decaying corpse for hours.

 _He has likely stayed up all night to keep watch over me,_ the Ranger guessed correctly. _He let me sleep so I could be rested today, so it might possibly prolong my living, while taking no rest himself._

When after a few moments Legolas did not respond, Aragorn asked the Elf what he had just been thinking, “Have you not slept at all, Greenleaf?”

So quietly that the Adan had trouble hearing him, Legolas murmured, “I did not want to sleep. I wanted to spend each moment of last night listening to your every breath, feeling the hair upon your chest and chin scratching my back and neck, and to sear into my mind the memory of having you inside me.”

Tears stung the man’s eyes at the simple adoration he heard in the Prince’s answer. He did not want to allow Legolas to remain in this maudlin mood he seemed to be fostering; the Ranger pushed his hips forward upon the narrow cot, which agitated his shaft inside the Elf. Legolas did not move away from this but nor did he push back; instead, the Silvan wittingly slid his topmost leg upwards towards his chest, which opened his body further to the man. Shamelessly but without evincing his own desire, the Prince was opening himself to the Adan’s attentions, as if willing to let Estel use his body again for pleasure without seeking the return of it for himself. However, after last night, Aragorn would not allow this a second time.

Beginning with the thin, delicate, pointed tip of Legolas’ ear, Estel slid his lips downwards until reaching the Prince’s earlobe, which he then took between his teeth to bring into his mouth. Lightly suckling this tender flesh, under the cover of the blankets, Aragorn smoothed his hands over the laegel’s chest, where he traced the well-defined musculature of his lover’s torso with the tips of his fingers. His tracing digits drifted to the piqued, rosy buds upon the Elf’s upper chest, which hardened under Aragorn’s calloused fingertips. Through all of this, Legolas remained quiescent and unresponsive, as if he were willing to merely lie there and let the Ranger do as he liked, so long as it pleased Aragorn to be doing so. This unusual, lethargic response worried Aragorn at first; he did not want a repeat performance of the night before, but to have Legolas participate for his own enjoyment, rather than merely to bring Aragorn satisfaction.

The effort of not moving his shaft inside the Prince was wearing the Adan’s patience very thin. He longed most to reach across Legolas’ hip to find the Elf’s shaft, since he wanted to ascertain whether Legolas was aroused at all. Somehow, he found the willpower to keep from doing so, though it was partially fear to find the Elf was unaroused that facilitated this undertaking. Aragorn focused instead upon running his hands over every inch of the laegel’s skin he could reach, though he paid especial attention to the areas he knew were most sensitive upon his lover – the soft flesh where the Elf’s jaw met his ear, which Estel laved and kissed in equal turns; the Silvan’s concavely muscled navel where a path of fine, dark amber hair trailed to his shaft, which Aragorn caressed with his right hand though he stopped short of touching the Prince’s cock; and the highly responsive peaks upon the Prince’s chest, which the man took turns tweaking and soothing with his left hand. Finally and much to the man’s utmost relief, the Wood-Elf was reacting to his attentions, for Legolas’ breathing was becoming irregular, his hips were twisting ever so slightly to create friction between the receptive swell inside his aperture and the man’s leaking arousal, and again, the Elf tightened his innermost flesh in a hard grasp of the human’s cock, which caused the already aroused Adan to gasp harshly. Legolas’ hand fumbled to seize Aragorn’s hand away from his navel to pull lower to the laegel’s groin. Being that the Wood-Elf was entirely nude save for one ankle caught in his mostly discarded trousers, Aragorn had no barrier between his hand and the Elf’s arousal. Immediately, Estel took the silent instruction with gladness, his fingers playing along the Prince’s sleek and rigid shaft, which caused a reactionary frisson of pleasure to shimmy the Elf’s body.

 _Thank Eru,_ he sighed to himself.

The night previous, Legolas had not allowed Aragorn to pleasure him, though he had been happy and eager to bring Aragorn pleasure. To feel beneath his fingers his lover’s shaft, primed and already seeping the pearlescent liquid at its slit that manifested Legolas’ need, satisfied the Ranger in some vague way he didn’t fully understand. He had never before last night satisfied his own need without Legolas also being satisfied – in fact, often the Ranger brought the Wood-Elf to completion several times before he found his own completion. It had worried him that the laegel might have desired him for something other than lust, as he had once done when trying to quiet the scar or seeking to erase the foul deeds of the merchants through Aragorn’s loving touch.

Now, though, he knew Legolas desired him, for he held the confirmation of this in hand. Before him, the Wood-Elf pushed his rear against where the human’s shaft filled him. The oil they had used and the seed Estel had spilled last night allowed Aragorn’s cock to shift inside the Elf with no trouble at all. With no windows and the blanket blocking out all light from the room beyond, the two knew it must be daylight because of the sounds of the women as they straightened the schoolroom and began leaving for their own homes and chores for the day. The lamp Halbarad had left burning the night before burned still, though its illumination was low. Even knowing Halbarad could enter at any moment to check on them or wake them for a palaver over the night before, neither Elf nor Ranger seemed to care. Languidly, Legolas twitched his rear away from and then against Estel’s groin, building their shared pleasure slowly. While his one hand still caressed the Wood-Elf’s shaft gently, Aragorn used the other hand upon the arm lying under the Elf’s upper half to caress Legolas’ belly, upper thighs, and his chest, paying special attention to the rosy buds thereon.

“Waking to the feeling of being inside of you is better than waking to a plate of honeyed cakes,” the Ranger whispered playfully into the Prince’s ear.  

Try though the Elf did to be quiet so not to draw attention to them, Legolas laughed; however, his amusement turned to into a low growl when the Ranger’s light touch became a fist encasing his shaft. In an uneven rhythm, Legolas’ innermost muscles tightened and released as he grew near to completion, his body working of its own accord to finish what they had started, and his lower half banging against Aragorn’s groin with enough force that the cot began to squeak. Unthinkingly in response, the Ranger bit into the tender flesh of the Silvan’s neck as he tried to stifle what would have been a loud moan. He doubted the women outside could hear the cot’s squeak over their own loudness, at least, for they were laughing, banging pots and pans around, and tending to noisy children.

The dawdling buildup of their pleasure finally peaked for the human and his seed spurted into the Elf’s body. Before he could begin to feel guilty for once more having found completion ere he gave the Prince the same, Legolas’ opening clenched down upon the man’s shaft so hard that Aragorn found himself bucking into the Silvan’s body and his cock spilling more seed into the Elf, while in his waiting and loving hand, Legolas spilled his own.

Panting for breath, the two remained as they were for several long moments before the Wood-Elf finally sighed contentedly, saying, “Now you can move, meleth nin.”

In the end, though, it was the Elf who moved. Legolas scooted forward and away from the man, which pulled the human’s shaft free, and then sat sideways so that he could look at Aragorn. The arm which had lain for hours under the Elf was now free; Estel used it to prop himself up, though his other hand he brought to his mouth, licking clean from it the salty evidence of the pleasure he had brought to his Greenleaf. Legolas watched the man do this for a moment, ere he sprang forward and claimed the human’s mouth. Voracious and rapacious, Legolas lathed and sucked upon Aragorn’s tongue and lips as if cleaning from Estel the very seed that Estel had cleaned from his fingers.

When he pulled away, the Elf said with a strangely vapid smile, while he complained jokingly, “Now I feel empty. Although I can still feel your seed inside me, Estel, and it feels glorious.”

Aragorn leant towards the Elf and began placing quick busses along the Silvan’s throat, telling Legolas when he finally reached the middle of the Wood-Elf’s chest, “Don’t say such things. You will have me hard again.”

When Legolas laughed with a cheer that sounded a bit more veracious than it had before, the Ranger pulled the nude Elf to him to encase the Elf in his arms as if he had not seen the Prince for weeks, rather than having just held him all through the night. The Prince nuzzled his face just under the man’s bearded chin and placed his ear upon the human’s collarbone, which seemed to be where most Legolas loved to lay his head. Even still, despite their loving play, the Ranger could feel the Silvan’s melancholy as clearly as if it were his own. _This will not be the end of Greenleaf,_ he swore to himself, his grip upon the Elf tightening without his being aware. _Nor of me, if I can help it._ The Ranger was glad to have spent this night with Legolas – they both knew it was quite likely that in the next days they might not have the time for many intimate moments, if any at all and if they lived past the next day, much less the next moment. Besides, Aragorn wanted to bolster the Wood-Elf’s optimism and cheer however he might.

Finally, Legolas pulled away and rose. He watched the Wood-Elf stretch his arms over his head and arch his back felinely to stretch, the muscled flesh of the Elf’s torso rippling under his unblemished skin. The Silvan then turned around and offered a hand to the human, telling him wanly, “Up, now kaimamoroko. Let us find some water to wash.”

Aragorn stood. Yesterday, the numbness of his back had seemed to be growing, but right now, after having spent all night sharing the Elf’s warmth, the Adan felt as warm as he would normally feel, and the numbness was negligible. In fact, the Ranger considered that he felt better than he had in years. In fact, he felt like he had when he was just beginning to grow the first dark hairs upon his chin, back when first he had begun to fall in love with Legolas. Aragorn did not shiver with cold, for he felt hot and hale after his release. He did not have the normal aches with which he usually awoke – pains usually caused by pushing his body to its limits and from just being human. Although he could rise and be awake and aware in a moment’s time, now, Estel felt an astuteness of mind, a clearness of thinking, and a general optimism he had not felt since a child, back before he had learnt of his true heritage, before he had taken on the vow of being one of the Dúnedain, and before he had held much experience outside the valley and his Elven foster family.

Unaware that the cause of his newfound salubriousness was because Legolas had bequested to Estel the gift of his own faer’s vigor to renew Estel’s flagging vivacity, the man nearly guessed the underlying cause when he thought, _I feel like years have been added onto my life, or like the weariness and pains of the last twenty years have been erased! If Elise is sapping the life from those whom she touches, then while yesterday I felt like a sack of flour slowly leaking out onto the floor, I feel now like I’ve been filled back up again._ He found himself hoping, _Mayhap – if Jakob is right, and Elven heritage is somehow responsible for my and Legolas’ survival thus far – it might save us. Maybe she cannot kill us the same as the villagers._

He spun on heel to share this enthusiastic thought with his Silvan lover, who was fiddling with the lamp to brighten the dark room, which is when he truly took note of the Elf’s appearance. Dark rings encircled the Elf’s eyes. The Ranger could see the blue hued veins that ran near to the translucent skin upon the Prince’s flesh. He watched the Elf sort through their belongings, his actions listless and distracted. Rather than straight and proud as usual, the Prince seemed hunched over and beaten down. Even his eyes, which were usually lit with merriness and showed the quickness of his mind, seemed dull and tired. The man stood there silently as he watched the Elf, forgetting that he was half-nude and there were other people on the other side of the bookcases, but noticing that the usually perceptive Silvan seemed unaware of his being watched and assessed by the Ranger.

 _Maybe this will pass. Maybe, since I became better after a day or so, Legolas will become better, as well._ And yet, a new fear struck him in the gut, which caused all of his optimism to flee him in a bitter moment, along with the air in his lungs, which in a guttural grunt fled him just as rapidly. _Greenleaf has been on the cusp of dying for months now. His faer has barely endured through his rhaw’s torment. It is likely why he can see Elise when no one else can._ His heart pounding against his ribcage, the Ranger realized, _His faer is already tormented and dimmed. Is it hardy enough to endure whatever curse this is that Elise has placed upon us? Even should his being an Elf normally grant him longer time before his faer darkens entirely, could Legolas’ soul last that long? Or is the light of his faer already too benighted by tragedy and sorrow?_

Aragorn was suddenly quite sure that for all his hoping, it was likely Legolas would die before he did. His trousers around his thighs and his mouth agape with the profundity of his thoughts, Aragorn realized this scared him more than did the notion of his own death. He was reminded of Thranduil’s harsh castigation the night they had spoken between them of how best to aid Legolas in battling his grief. The Elvenking had claimed Aragorn wanted only for Legolas to survive long enough for the Ranger to enjoy the Elf while the man lived, and gave no thought to the suffering Legolas endured during the process, or how the Silvan Prince was sure to die from that sorrow in the end. It had been a cruel thing to say, though not entirely unwarranted.

 _Aren’t I doing just that? Even last night,_ he criticized himself, _I enjoyed Legolas’ affections while he did not even desire mine, and all the while, Greenleaf slowly dies from the inside out._

When Legolas turned around to see what the silent Adan was doing, the Silvan finally caught the human staring at him in unabashed concern; the Elf did not react as the man thought he might – that is, by trying to find out the cause of the human’s worry and allaying it – as would the Elf normally. Instead, while Legolas smiled faintly at Estel with the same love and esteem with which he typically looked upon the Adan, there laid an unusual, indolent apathy upon the Elf’s features. To Aragorn, in that moment before the Prince turned back to his task of obtaining for them what they needed to wash up, not by his features but by the set of them, Legolas looked like a very old man who had lived past the point of utility and pleasure, who merely existed. He had seen the same look upon some Edain who survived skirmishes while their villages and towns burned, while their families and friends died, who then became a ghost of their former self, as if the life and joy inside them was hollowed out to leave a husk of their previous self.

“Here,” Legolas told the man, handing him one of the towels they kept in their satchels along with a waterskin. Another brief, dismal smile upon his pale visage, Legolas instructed the human, “At least pull up your trousers and wash your face.”

The Elf splashed water onto his own towel, and then rubbed at his face, ere he began cleaning the rest of his body as best he could. They would wash up enough to hide their pleasurable activities for now, and later, if possible, they might try to bathe properly. Aragorn took his cloth, wetted it, and did the same as the Elf, starting with his face before he rubbed the damp cloth over his hands, his arms, his chest, and then his groin. Here, at his now spent shaft, the Ranger paid special attention to make sure that he had no blood upon him, for his worry he might have hurt Legolas during the night due to sleeping with their bodies joined was not yet appeased. Much to his aggravated worry, he found a faint ring of tacky, coppery blood upon his cock, just near where it met his body.

“Greenleaf,” he whispered to get the Elf’s attention. When Legolas turned to him, the Prince startled at the odium he saw in the human’s glower, though the Elf soon realized this was for the Ranger himself and not for the Elf. “I am sorry, meleth nin. Are you well?”

Not understanding of what the man was speaking, Legolas nodded his head and gave Estel the same glimmer of the vacant smile he had been wearing all that morning, to say, “Yes, Estel. I am fine. What is it?”

He held out the cloth in his hand to show the laegel the tinge of blood he had only just wiped from his shaft. “You are bleeding. Please, let me check that I haven’t hurt you.”

To the man’s complete surprise, Legolas nodded absently and let Estel push him back into sitting upon the bed. _This obeisance is most uncommon,_ he decided. While it pleased him to know Legolas was allowing him the chance to make certain the Elf was not hurt, Aragorn had not expected to be given this opportunity, but to be denied and told to quit his worrying.

Having not yet replaced his trousers, the Elf needed only to lie back a bit for Aragorn to inspect him. Estel spared a glance to the blanket-covered gap between the wall and bookcase, for it would be most unfortunate for someone to enter right now, and then spread his lover’s legs. First using his eyes, the Ranger saw no blood seeping from the laegel’s body. He then used his fingers to inspect inside the Prince’s softened opening, but seeing no blood after withdrawing them, concluded aloud quietly to Legolas, “You are right. You seem fine. We should have used more oil last night or perhaps this morning. Are you sure you are in no pain?” he asked, his chest tightening at the thought that he might have caused the Wood-Elf any pain in so sensitive an area. Estel would never forgive himself if he had caused his lover discomfort during their lovemaking, since he knew firsthand what excruciation the Prince had endured in this particular area.

Sliding into sitting upon the bed again, Legolas shook his head. He reached for the cloth to finish his washing up, which he ended by wiping the seed from his spent shaft and from between the globes of his rear. Legolas pulled on his trousers, while Aragorn washed his hands again. When the Elf merely finished dressing without addressing the man’s concerns, the man only grew evermore concerned. To the Ranger’s consternation, even now, Legolas seemed unfazed by Aragorn’s concern, when normally, the Wood-Elf would be saying whatever he could to appease the Adan’s guilty conscience.

 _Now that I think of it, I did not prepare his body with oil, as would I normally. Legolas did it. But he took no care in doing so, I suppose._ The Elf had wanted for Aragorn not to doubt why he had desired the man, but now, the man did just that. _He was hurried and eager, but desired no pleasure for himself. What prompted him into wanting me to find pleasure when he was not aroused himself?_

By the time he was through replacing his own clothing, the Elf was dressed, as well, and brushing his hair back into its customary braids while sitting in the chair at the desk. With an obligatory grin, Legolas tried to hand the brush to Estel, who only looked at it as if he had never before seen such a thing and did not know what to do with it. At this, Legolas snorted in half-hearted amusement ere he tossed it back into his satchel. By the time they tidied up their belongings and the bed a bit, both of them stalling without having spoken of the other of this intent, the women in the room beyond had left. Together, they pushed past the blanket over the entryway to the ensconcement and walked without, only to find that Jakob had returned already and sat with Halbarad and Liandra at the table, bowls and mugs set before them.

“Good morning,” the elder Ranger spoke with no trace of welcome that might normally accompany such a greeting. “Come eat, if you wish. The women have made us porridge to break our fast.”

 _Clearly, Halbarad sees nothing good about this morning,_ the younger Ranger mused. _But I suppose he has been up all night, keeping watch over us all and worrying about our lives._ He walked with Legolas to the table where the others were assembled. As the two sat down, Jakob was watching Aragorn with a suspicion that was unusual upon the man’s usually lively face. _Is everyone in a foul mood this morning except for me?_ he asked himself, but then wondered, _Of course, perhaps I ought to be in a foul mood, I suppose._

Without preamble, Jakob sat aside his steaming mug of tea to say, “I’m sorry, Aragorn.”

Flabbergasted at this, Estel meant to ask why, but Legolas spoke first, forefending the young Ranger’s further apology in saying with an amused smile, “Don’t worry, Jakob. He’s not hiding his flaying knife anywhere. Estel knows that I am no child to be watched over and coddled and does not hold you at fault for my actions.”

Jakob first snorted and then laughed outright, only to then slam his hand against his thigh as he exclaimed, “Ilúvatar be praised! I worried all night that my beautiful freckled hide would soon be the Chieftain’s next leather coat.”

Bewildered but amused nonetheless, for although he wasn’t entirely sure of what the two were talking he could clearly understand that Jakob thought he would be angry with him for Legolas being touched by the haunt, Estel took up his spoon and began eating the thick, honeyed porridge sitting before him. The food was cold since he and the Elf had lingered in the ensconcement while everyone else was already moving about, but the human found himself ravenous and so ate the simple repast with relish. No one seemed as amused as were Legolas and Jakob at their inside joke, however, which made Aragorn think, _I am assuming Greenleaf apologized to Jakob last night, then, as I expected he would over his overreaction to Jakob startling him. But it also seems they have found some comity between them._

“What of the woman and her children? Are they with family now?” the Elf asked Jakob as he absently fiddled with the spoon inside his own bowl. In the stark morning light coming through the slats of the shutters over the paneless windows, the Prince looked even more pallidly lucent. Laying his spoon to the side, the Wood-Elf instead picked up the mug of tea, which he drank from deeply.

 _I wonder when last Greenleaf ate,_ Aragorn found himself wondering. The Prince had not eaten in his presence since they had shared jerky at the crossroads near the creek the morning before. As he watched the laegel ignoring his food now, the Ranger had to remind himself, _But he will eat when he is hungry. Just as Legolas said, I am not his keeper to watch over and coddle him._ It was a reminder that sat heavily upon his mind, though, since it was in his nature to want to care for the Elf whom he loved more than anyone or anything in all of Arda.

“I took them to her husband’s sister’s house. The sister said that they would stay there with her family for now,” Jakob replied, assuring the Wood-Elf by telling him, “And the children will be looked after there. The sister has her own children and husband, and they are all close, I think. After taking them there, I returned to the house and carried the man’s body into their barn until it can be buried. The dog, however, followed me home. Even now, I think it is outside on the porch waiting on me to come back out. Poor thing,” Jakob murmured as if speaking to himself now.

They ate in silence for a while – well, except for Legolas, who did not even pretend to eat a single bite, though he did drink all of the strongly brewed tea in his cup. His eyes ever upon the Elf, Aragorn watched as the Silvan took to rubbing at the center of his chest. This was the same area where the Prince had taken to pestering when his sorrow whelmed him, but also, it was where Elise had touched the laegel, and thus likely caused Legolas discomfort and numbness. Suspicion fogged its way across Aragorn’s mind to cloud his thoughts. _Why does Legolas feel so much worse, when I feel so much better?_ He had no feasible explanation for it except for that which he had already considered; that is, Legolas’ faer was unable to endure Elise’s touch as was Aragorn’s, or that like how Aragorn’s ‘sickness’ had bettered, so too would Legolas’ sickness better given time.

Eventually, Jakob spoke up again, asking Aragorn and Legolas, “And how are you two feeling today?”

“I, for one, feel just fine, truth be told. I am not even shivering this morning, but then, I slept well and stayed warm all night. Even the numbness seems no greater than it was yesterday’s night, and is perhaps even less so than then,” Aragorn replied. He drained the last of his own tea and sat back in his chair, looking to Legolas for his answer. He had not thought to ask the Elf if he felt well this morning and was not pleased with himself at the oversight. Giving the Silvan a closer look, Estel once more took stock of the Prince’s appearance, his healer’s gaze noticing how Legolas looked drawn and tired, again seeing that the Elf’s bloodshot eyes were rimmed with dark circles, while his skin looked sallow and thin.

Seeing how the three Rangers and the elder woman were all looking to him for a reply, Legolas said simply, “I am fine.”

Aragorn took the Elf’s statement for what it truly was – a deflection to avoid their worry, which was what the Prince did whenever anyone asked him if he were well. Suddenly, with a harrumph of disbelief, Liandra stood and began clearing away the empty dishes, save for Legolas’, which she left as if in hopes the Elf would choose to eat his meal. With the bowls in hand, she asked the men seated around the table, “If you both feel fine, then are you both feeling up to doing as we planned and meeting with Elise’s family to try to find answers?”

Aragorn wanted most to set his mind to the work of ending Elise and thus her hold over him and Legolas, and so agreed readily. “Yes, let us do that this morning, as soon as possible. I’m not sure if they have any usable information, but if they do, we will need daylight if there is any plan to enact.”

“Then I will go find them now,” the herbalist said. She placed their bowls in a large tub meant for the dishes and then grabbed a shawl draped over the back of the chair in which she had been sitting. While wrapping it over her shoulders, she told them, “I’ll be back in about an hour or so. I don’t intend to tell them about Elise. I will let you four bear that bad news, if you will.”

They watched the elderly woman leave, her gait unsteady with her advanced age but purposeful all the same. When Liandra had left, Halbarad stood to say to the two younger Rangers, “I’m going to fetch more firewood and water. Anyone willing to help your elder?”

“I will help,” Legolas offered numbly, causing Halbarad to nod and smile gratefully. He had the impression that the Elf did not want for Aragorn to be outside in the cold if it could be avoided.

Legolas walked back to the ensconcement to fetch his cloak, and before his return, the elder man looked to Aragorn, his silver eyes searching the younger Ranger’s similarly silver eyes for answers as to the Elf’s odd demeanor. Before Estel could offer the only information he had – that he knew nothing of what was causing the Prince’s melancholy and weariness, save for the obvious, Legolas was back in the main room, his cloak tied about the narrow column of his throat. He led the way to the door, allowing Halbarad out before shutting the portal behind them, and leaving Aragorn and Jakob alone.

The moment Halbarad’s booted feet stopped making clacking sounds as he trod across the school’s porch, and thus signaled he and the Elf were in the yard and hopefully beyond hearing, the red-haired Ranger leant forward in his chair, placed his folded arms upon the table, and told his Chieftain in a whisper, “I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but your Elf friend is a madman, Aragorn.”

At once, Estel bristled at this description of the Prince. Over the last few months, Legolas had been made to feel as if he were mad by his father, Mithfindl, and the scar – Aragorn would not listen to Jakob inveigh the Silvan’s soundness of mind. He crossed his arms over his chest, scowled, and told Jakob bluntly, “If you speak of his nearly slitting your throat last night, then you speak out of turn, yes. You ought to know better than to sneak up on anyone like that, but especially a stranger to you. Legolas is not a madman for protecting himself.”

Waving off his Chieftain’s words, Jakob interrupted, “No, no. That’s not what I meant. I understand that bit. I truly do. And he apologized, and I apologized. No I meant for how he acted around that haunt last night. You weren’t there. You didn’t see him, Aragorn. I don’t know Legolas like you do, but it seemed he had a wish for death. I swear to you,” the younger Ranger declared fervently, convincing his Chieftain with his earnest desire to be of help, which lay so frank upon his honest face while warning Estel, “I tried to get him inside the house where it was safe. I even tried to pull him inside to get him away from her. He wouldn’t let me. I mean, earlier last night, while we were patrolling, I told him I would do whatever I could to be of aid to you – I owed you my life for your having saved it from the hangman’s noose. I don’t know what you’ve done for him to make him feel that he owes you his life, but he acted with no regard for his own welfare at all. Being a loyal friend is one thing; acting suicidal is another.”

Careful to keep his features schooled from the shock he felt to hear this, Aragorn still defended his lover, telling Jakob, “Legolas wants to free this village of the girl’s presence, same as you and I and Halbarad. And he has no duty to do so, like we do. What you call madness, some would call bravery, which is what I would call it.” Certainly, Jakob had no right to know what Legolas had suffered through no more than did Halbarad, and Estel would not be pulled into telling his fellow Rangers of it just to appease their curiosity. However, he wanted Jakob to understand Legolas was acting out of love and not madness, but without having to explain his and the Prince’s relationship. Taking a deep breath to calm his mounting anger for the younger man, Aragorn uncrossed his arms from his chest and explained with more patience than he truly felt, “Listen: you know I was raised in Rivendell with Elrond and his family, who are my family. Although not related by blood, Legolas is like a son to my father, and like a brother to my brothers. He is more than a mere friend to me, Jakob, and he would not return to Imladris with word of my death without being able to tell our brothers that he did everything in his power to try to save me, just as I would not return to them without being able to say the same.”

Nodding while looking away from his Chieftain’s anger for him, Jakob again held up his hands as if in surrender to Aragorn’s argument. The fiery haired Ranger tapped his fingers against the tabletop for a moment in agitation as he tried to think of what he wanted to say; perhaps Jakob found his words lacking, for he shook his head, reached across the table for Legolas’ untouched bowl of porridge, and began eating it without speaking again. Perhaps his Chieftain’s anger had quelled his further warning, or perhaps Aragorn’s explanation had swayed the younger man into silence – either way, as if Aragorn weren’t worried enough for his Elven lover, Jakob’s words sparked yet a new line of pestersome thought inside the man’s mind. _I cannot fathom how it could be so, but after hearing Jakob say Greenleaf seemed suicidal in his attempt to find a way to save me, I wonder if somehow my feeling so much better while he feels so much worse isn’t Greenleaf’s doing._ If Jakob hadn’t been there right behind Legolas while the Elf spoke to the girl’s specter and thus seen at least Legolas’ half of what had occurred between haunt and Silvan, Aragorn might wonder if Legolas hadn’t somehow traded his life for Estel’s life.

Deciding he needed more information from Jakob and intending to ask more questions about what was said the night previous by Legolas to Elise, Aragorn garnered the man’s attention by saying, “Jakob.”

The younger man forwent eating and looked to his Chieftain, but their conversation got no further, for before Aragorn could begin, the schoolhouse’s door was flung open and Halbarad strode inside. Both Aragorn and Jakob instinctively stood at the older man’s rapid and determined approach, at ready to grab their weapons and be of aid, but the huge grin upon Halbarad’s typically stoic face halted them.

“Good news,” the elder man told them as he stopped at the head of the table. Halbarad’s smile seemed to grow even wider as he explained, “Rumors are flying through the village. Elves have been spotted riding up the road that comes into town, and the word is that two of them look exactly alike.”

A smile similar to Halbarad’s spread over Aragorn’s face. His brothers had arrived.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Didn't think I would have time to edit this before I went in, but I did, so here you have it -- a new chapter. I'm still going to warn you that another chapter might take a couple weeks. I'm not really sure how long I will be out of commission. But, I have the chapter after this written, so once I'm able to get up and move around again, I will edit and post it. 
> 
> How much of a nerd am I? I'm taking the book, "The Atlas of Middle-Earth" to read while in recovery/ICU. I'm reading a book about maps! :D Enjoy, dears.

Legolas needed only to follow the throng of curious villagers. The humans were gossiping amongst themselves as they hurried along – cutting through alleys, tramping across yards, and even hopping over fences in their efforts to catch a glimpse of the Elves who were rumored to be entering the village. To the Prince, it seemed to him now much as it had the day before, when he and Estel had been led into the village by Jakob and the two villagers with him; however, this time, he was in the anxious crowd as a spectator rather than the one whose arrival was being awaited. Moments ago, two of the women who had stayed in the schoolhouse the night previous had come running up to Halbarad while he and the Ranger were gathering armfuls of firewood to carry into the schoolhouse. They had borne the news of the advent of Elrond’s emissaries, while also telling Legolas and Halbarad that two of the Elves were alleged to look exactly alike. It was at that moment when Legolas’ barely concealed, mounting wave of anxiety had finally broken, much like the surf breaking upon the sheer face of a seawall. All through the night and the morning, the Silvan had been growing evermore uneasy as his faer declined, but now, with the arrival of his Minyatar’s people and the identical Elves whom he could only assume to be the twins, Legolas could at least hope that the burden of keeping Estel alive was not his to bear alone any longer.

He supposed he felt joy for his kith’s arrival, but in truth, the Wood-Elf felt little. The numbness upon his chest seemed to have grown until it now consumed the entirety of his torso; conversely, unlike how Estel had described the unfeelingness to be spreading along his skin, Legolas felt as if this numbness were spreading inside of him, making it less physical and more spiritual, and cleaving the Silvan from his usual untrammeled merriness until he felt nothing but downtrodden and apathetic. His only true good cheer this morning, despite Estel’s best efforts to raise his spirits, was that Aragorn had both appeared and acted as if he felt much better than the day before, with the man having stopped his shivering, having enjoyed a full night of rest, and having been able to enjoy the Elf’s body twice, which served to bolster Aragorn’s good mood and relax the man. The Prince, meanwhile, had spent the whole of the night willing his faer’s energy into the Adan. With the Ranger asleep at the time, Legolas had not known if his measures were working, but once Aragorn was awake, the laegel had known that his plan had succeeded and Estel’s faer renewed at the cost of his own faer’s increasing deterioration.

Indeed, as he trailed the Edain to where the newcomers were soon to pass by, Legolas reaffirmed to himself, _Every scrap. Every single bit. I will give it all to Estel if doing so keeps him living._

His muscles ached in ways that they had never before bothered him. His body was weary in a manner that the typically untirable Elf found foreign, for even walking along the relatively flat ground felt to him as if he were climbing up a mountainside. His mind was dulled and his head hurt, as if he had been awake for weeks without rest, and feeling much how the Prince had felt when under Mithfindl’s influence and the milk of the poppy’s unwelcome inebriety. Most detrimentally, given the manner in which he was soon to die and as he was the only one capable of seeing Elise and thus perchance the only one capable of ending her, Legolas was inopportunely sapped of all motivation, making his will to live wither with each of his stale heartbeats. Only the realization that with the twins came hope for Estel kept Legolas walking to greet the travellers, as his forsaken faer longed to see with his own eyes the identically kind and mischievous faces of the two Noldor whom he loved as brothers, who might be able to save Aragorn even after Legolas was gone.

He had not even considered waiting for Estel to join him in greeting the Elven emissaries and wished Estel would not be angry with him for taking off without the man. Around the Prince, but unseen by Legolas, the humans who were pressing towards the road to gain a better view of the travelers who would come this way were just now noticing his presence, as well. Those who did gave him a wide berth; whether this was done out of fear or respect, the Silvan did not contemplate, being that he took no notice of their avoidance. In fact, since this gave him better room to maneuver, the Wood-Elf was able to weave his way closer to the roadside, where he climbed upon a plank fence and stood upon an impossibly slim post that would not have held a normal man’s weight, though the Elf easily perched like a graceful bird so he could see over the crowd and to where the group were just now passing into the village proper. Two of the riders split off from the others and were immediately surrounded by their kith, which caused the Elf to think that these two must be the villagers who had taken word to Elrond with the Ranger, Tomas. No doubt, the two villagers would have a grand story to tell of seeing the magnificent valley of Imladris and the many Eldar who resided there. Legolas thought that had the village a tavern, the two would have likely had free drinks for life bought by those who wanted to hear again and again the story of how the two men had spoken to the esteemed Lord of Rivendell and ridden back home with Elrond’s two sons. Little happened in the village, it seemed – at least until recently – and they would be speaking of recent events for years to come, should the people here live to tell the tales.

There were five riders remaining, all of whom slowed and dismounted once they passed into the settlement, which Legolas knew to be so that the twins and those with them could walk into the humans’ village respectfully, rather than ride and risk giving the impression of being lordly or pompous. They were guests here, after all, even if they had been asked to come to be of service. Standing on the fencepost and thus looming above the surrounding Edain’s heads, Legolas remained unnoticed by his kith for now because the Prince had his cloak on with his head covered – that the Elves did not expect his or Aragorn’s presence in the human village kept the emissaries from giving the Prince any special notice, as well. As his kith rounded the corner to come his way, Legolas hopped off the fencepost, pushed gently between the thick of curious Edain along the roadside, and came out into the road just as they passed him by. The Elf closest to him the Prince would have recognized even had he not seen the Silvan’s kind face from afar, for Legolas knew this particular Elf’s bow, quiver, and sword – not to mention the horse that the Silvan walked beside, being that it was the Prince’s own steed, Arato.

“Kalin,” he said in greeting and grabbed the arm of his sentry, who had been trailing behind the others a short distance.

Caught off his guard to be grabbed when as far as he knew there was no one here that would know him, Kalin whirled around with the hand of his unimpeded arm hovering above the haft of his sword. Seeing this, Legolas threw back the hood of his cloak to bare his face. The moment Kalin could tell who it was to have stopped him, he let go of his weapon, pulled his arm free of his Prince’s hold, and then seized the younger Silvan by his shoulders in a tight grip. His mouth hanging open slightly, the fair sentry exclaimed in return, “Elbereth’s flaming ass! Legolas! What are you doing here?”

He did not have the chance to answer, for the in the next moment, Kalin was rudely removed from the way by Arato, who upon hearing Legolas’ name and then seeing his beloved master, pushed the sentry with his massive head until Kalin stumbled back a few steps. Arato then rammed his muzzle into the Prince’s face, his steamy, hot breath blowing against the Wood-Elf’s cheek and neck. He reached up and lovingly ran his hand along Arato’s neck from his ears to his withers, while Arato stamped his front hooves in unending joy to have his master’s presence and attention. The conversant feel of the dappled, white and grey horseflesh under his hand brought tired tears to the Prince’s eyes, though why, he could not have explained except that with only Estel here in the village thus far, it was of great comfort to him to have anything or anyone else of familiarity about – even his stallion.

Not to be dissuaded from speaking to his Prince, Kalin laughed and shoved at Arato’s broad shoulder, though he did not even budge the stout horse. Instead, the sentry walked behind Legolas so he could address his fellow Elf. Taking the younger Silvan by the shoulder, he incited Legolas into turning around and did now as he had tried to do before being interrupted by Arato – that is, taking hold of his Prince’s arms to pull him into a relieved hug. Prior to the last year, Kalin would never have hugged his Prince in such a way, but now, the sentry was no longer prone to hiding his unending devotement and brotherly love for his charge. With meekness, Legolas allowed his sentry’s embrace but did not return it, though he briefly laid his forehead down upon Kalin’s shoulder. After too brief a time, the elder Wood-Elf pulled back so that he could see into the younger Wood-Elf’s face.

“You are well, my…” Kalin began but cut himself off abruptly, only just thinking that it might not be wise to reveal his charge’s royalty amidst this crowd of Edain – not until he knew whether Legolas felt it safe to do so. Instead, he amended in repeating, “You are well, Legolas. We had no idea you would be here, but I cannot tell you how glad I am that you are! It eases my worried mind to see you, even if it has only been a couple of months since you left with Estel.”

Too caught up in the relief he felt to be joined by those of his own kind – and by three of his closest friends at that – Legolas rebuked his traitorous thoughts’ attempts to contemplate whether Kalin’s mind would remain at ease once he learnt what had happened in this village, most especially to his Prince. But before he could respond or get too far in his dire thoughts, the other three Elves and remaining human had heard and seen the sentry’s greeting to Legolas, and the Prince was soon surrounded on either side by Elladan and Elrohir. Remaining with the horses several strides ahead stood a dark-haired, grim looking human who Legolas did not know but guessed to be Tomas, the one sent with the villagers to Imladris to seek Elrond’s aid. Behind the younger of the twins stood a she-Elf whom Legolas had seen around Rivendell often enough during his many years visiting the valley to recognize, but he remembered her name only because she had been one of the guards who had brought back Mithfindl’s body.

_Reana, I think she is called,_ he recollected, giving her a drawn smile of greeting, which she returned honestly but nervously, ere she began scanning the swell of humans around her as if in fear for her Lords’ safety. It was unlike the twins to bring any of Glorfindel’s warriors with them while travelling, as they could well take care of themselves, but the Prince figured that Elrond must have insisted upon having an escort of sorts for his sons, in addition to Kalin’s experienced presence. It pleased Legolas for her to be here, since ere the end, they might need all the help they could get.

Without saying the words though their own shocked albeit delighted smiles showed Legolas just how excited they were to see the Prince, as well, Elladan and Elrohir took turns hugging the Woodland Elf, who once more allowed this without truly feeling the joy he ought to and without thinking to return their affection. Elrohir first gave the Silvan a mighty hug that took the younger, somewhat shorter Elf off his feet for a moment, and then teased when Elladan took hold of the laegel to hug him next, “Kalin is right – we had no idea you would be here, but we should have known you and Estel would be in the thick of trouble!” 

In the elder Noldo’s arms, the Wood-Elf allowed himself to relax a bit as he was overcome with  the respite promised by having the twins there, for Elladan and Elrohir would do everything in their power to save their human foster brother’s life. _There is hope for Estel, even after I have died._ His forced smile slowly began to slide from his face as he considered, _And now that Kalin is here, he can take word back to our King of my death. He can tell my father my final message to him,_ he decided, thinking of what he had longed for the chance to tell Thranduil when first Elise had touched him and he thought his end would come just then, instead of slowly as it was now. With Kalin here, Legolas could send his father his love and apology, and his final forgiveness. When like his thoughts his eyes turned to the sentry, Legolas saw over Elladan’s shoulder that Kalin’s initial, pleased surprise was now artlessly unveiled concern. The older Wood-Elf, who was so attuned to his Prince that he often knew what Legolas wanted or needed, how he felt or what he meant to say long before Legolas knew himself, could sense at once that his beloved Prince was unwell.

_They will think it to be sorrow or grief,_ he consoled himself. For now, he would prefer his friends think him to be suffering still from the aftereffects of his recent woe and tragedy, rather than the truth. His and Estel’s being touched by Elise could not be hidden, of course, but his task in bolstering Aragorn’s faer at the cost of his own was knowledge Legolas intended to take to his grave – and quite literally at that. If the twins or Kalin knew of it before his death, they would put an end to it. Closing his eyes for a moment, the laegel tried to gather his wayward thoughts, which drifted aimlessly about his mind like the sunflakes scattering down upon them and the road on which they lingered, their every movement and word noted by the innocuously curious humans of the settlement.

“We agreed much the same when learning that Halbarad asked for aid from Imladris, saying that you two were bound to come, being that neither of you can say no to joining in trouble,” he finally managed to rib in return of Elrohir’s suggestion that Legolas and Aragorn were troublemakers. “In fact, Estel was so certain that you two would show, he made you a pot of mud and berry soup, Elrohir.”

The identical Noldor laughed gaily at the inside joke they shared over the memory, while Kalin looked on in contentment merely to be near his Prince and for his Prince to be alive and well, though his concern was no less than before. The elder twin asked of Legolas when finally he let the Silvan out of his embrace, “Speaking of whom, where is our human brother, muindor?”

“Nearby, with Halbarad and Jakob. The Rangers have set up in the village’s schoolhouse. I came directly here after hearing the rumor of your arrival,” he explained as the twins walked back to their horses, where Tomas was patiently standing. With dismissive waves of his hand and vague promises to provide answers later, Tomas responded to the many calls to him from the villagers asking for information. Legolas thought that Tomas must be a regular visitor here in the village, for they all seemed to know him by name and spoke to him with some familiarity.

“Then let us go find him,” Elrohir eagerly suggested.

They soon began away, with Tomas walking ahead of them once more to direct the way, Elladan and Elrohir leading their horses just behind, and Legolas walking between them for now. Reana and Kalin walked side by side at the rear. As they ambled onwards, the twins seemed oblivious to the stares of the Edain around them, though they did not ignore the villagers. Instead, Legolas noted how much like Elrond the two Noldor appeared just then, for they carried themselves in the same way as did their father, such that the nervous murmurings of the crowd seemed to quiet and the people’s palpable anxiety lessened with the exudation of assurance and calm from the smilingly benevolent twins. As did Elrond, his identical sons were able to put to ease the harried minds of those around them with their mere presence. Reana, on the other hand, appeared troubled, as if still in fear for her Lords’ well-being amongst so many humans. She had a faint scar upon her face that ran in a slanted curl from her temple down to the underneath of her ear– so distressed was she to be amongst all these humans that her face was growing ever paler and the scar standing out evermore. With her long, dark hair pulled back into a single tail at the nape of her neck, her dark eyes flashing from Adan to Adan, and her sword hand hovering always around the hilt of her sheathed long knife, the battle-seasoned Elleth might have incited fear amidst the villagers, had not the twins seemed so benignly in control of the situation.

Unbeknownst to the laegel, both twins had taken notice of Legolas’ disengaged demeanor and exhausted appearance, which reminded them of the way their Silvan friend had once acted and looked when the now absent scar had held control over the younger Elf’s mind. Seeing this similar indifference frightened them both and caused Elrohir to ask next, “And both of you are well, then, Greenleaf?”

He dithered a moment by turning his face up to the bright autumnal sun overhead. The algid air blowing in the mild breeze brought with it the sweet smell of the creek’s clear water, the crisp scent of the nearby leaves fallen from their limbs, and the lively balm of the fir trees in the distance. Overlaying all these scents were the regular smells of unwashed or irregularly washed human bodies, waste and piss, of the many different types of food being cooked for the morning meal, the tallow being boiled for candles, and the stench of the various animals who were housed in the village, like the goats in the pen they now passed. But even these less than agreeable odors were comforting, for they were the smells of living things. He breathed the air in deeply, filling his lungs from his belly to his upper chest, while expecting to feel the familiar tautness of his torso as he took in as much of the morning air as possible; and yet, the numbness from Elise’s touch prevented him from enjoying the sensation. A sudden band of rigidity exerted itself around his middle and the fragrant air escaped him in a nausea inducing, too-fast exhale. This caused his vision to dim momentarily, while his next breath came only with great exertion and concentration. Legolas unthinkingly looked behind him for Kalin, desiring the solace of his sentry’s palliative presence in what he suddenly thought might be his last moment.

The panic was not apparent upon his face, but Kalin did not need for Legolas to speak or give hint of his fear for the sentry to know that his Prince was terrified, though Kalin could not even begin to guess as to why his Prince was unexpectedly beset by terror. Acting on instinct, Kalin let the reins to Arato’s bit fall from his hand and he strode the few steps forward to reach his Prince. But by then, Legolas had already turned to face forward again and did not see his sentry’s approach from behind. Arato, meanwhile, followed behind his master without need of being led, though having seen Kalin drop the reins, Reana picked them up to hold along with her own mount’s lead.

When Legolas’ answer took too long in coming, the elder twin took gentle hold of the younger Elf’s upper arm and prompted the Prince, all the while without any of them ceasing their cadenced amble towards the schoolhouse, “Greenleaf? You and Estel are well?”

Instead of looking at Elladan’s worry for him, Legolas instead watched the many hopeful faces of the people in the crowd whom he and the Rangers were trying to save, all of whom now scrutinized the band of Eldar as they went to confer with Halbarad, Jakob, and Aragorn. Now was not the time for serious discussion – not with all of these Edain around – but the Wood-Elf did not wish to lie to his friends. In recent times, he might have prevaricated a bit, but currently, with Estel also suffering from the same illness as that from which Legolas suffered, there would be no hiding the truth of his dire condition to avoid their worry, since their worry would be what drove their actions to aid Aragorn.

So instead, the Silvan gave each twin what he hoped to be a reassuring smile and then averred, “As well as can be expected, I suppose, but let us speak of that shortly. Estel is without doubt waiting with open arms for your arrival.”

Over the Silvan’s slightly shorter head, the twins shared a knowing look between them, but did not press the matter further, and Legolas let his steps slow so that he could walk with Kalin, as he wished to speak to his sentry for a moment. To his surprise, Kalin was only a half step behind him, and took his Prince’s arm in hand the moment Legolas’ pace lagged. By this hold, the elder Silvan guided his Prince into walking out of the way of the twins’ horses and then behind them, though before Reana, Arato, and her own horse. Despite being surrounded by their kith and a multitude of curious humans, Kalin deemed this private enough to have his alarms pacified.

Speaking lowly so not to be overheard by the Edain, though not low enough that Reana, Elladan, or Elrohir could not listen should they desire to, the sentry moved closer to Legolas as he asked his charge in rapid succession, “What is it, my Prince? What is wrong? Are you injured? Is it the scar’s voice? Has it returned?”

He asked himself, _Am I so easily read?_ It was Kalin’s duty to see to his Prince’s welfare, but the sentry had made it his self-appointed duty in life to see to his Prince’s every need, whether it was a meal, an escort through dangerous territory, or a confidante. Yes, his love for his Prince caused Kalin to care more for his Prince than he cared for anyone else, and Kalin had grown to understand and perceive his Prince’s needs better than anyone else could – even better than Estel, Elrond, or Legolas himself. Reminded of his sentry’s aptness for this, Legolas shook his head at both Kalin’s question and his own thoughts.

Aloud, he deferred the sentry’s question just as he had the twins’ earlier query, saying with mendacious appeasement, “Not now, Kalin. I will tell you of it all in time, I promise.” When the elder Silvan stood straighter, his brow furrowing and his mouth setting into a grim line of determination, the Prince realized that his attempt to reassure his friend had only intimated that he would tell Kalin what was wrong later, and not that there was nothing wrong. Now, Kalin’s mind was set upon how to aid his Prince without even knowing what was the matter. Sighing inaudibly, Legolas stepped closer to Kalin until their shoulders jounced against each other as they walked. He admitted to his most loyal friend and staunchest protector, “These past few days have been harrowing for Estel and I. I can only pray that Minyatar sent Elladan and Elrohir with good counsel for how to solve the problem this village faces. These villagers’ lives – and Estel’s life – depends upon it.”

With that said, Kalin believed he knew what ailed his Prince, for if Aragorn’s well-being was in doubt, then to the elder Silvan, it was no wonder the younger Silvan appeared so fatigued and preoccupied. While Legolas had not exactly lied, he felt shame to see Kalin’s relief, for while the elder Silvan would never want for Aragorn to suffer, he wanted more for his Prince never to suffer – as was only natural, since Kalin was first and foremost Legolas’ friend and sentry. When it seemed that Kalin would question him further, though, the Prince waved off his fellow Silvan’s concern and queried instead, “As much as I am pleased you are here, why have you come with Elladan and Elrohir? I didn’t think anything would pull you away from the valley until I returned.”

Kalin spared a quick look back at the Elleth who was currently utterly preoccupied with watching out for danger from the Edain crowd. The sentry’s fair face blushed a little as he smiled at Legolas, who realized that Kalin did not want to discuss his true aim where the Elleth might hear. Legolas could well guess why this was so and he felt a niggling amusement as he pondered, _A new love interest already? After_ _Faelthîr_ _, I would have thought Kalin might not trust another Noldorin Elleth for a while, if ever._

But if proven to be the case, Legolas would be happy for Kalin, since Kalin deserved a loving Elleth with whom to bond. Then, perhaps, the sentry could pledge his life to something other than his fanatical dedication to his Prince. Besides, while not quite as radiantly beautiful as Faelthîr, Reana was pretty in the way of an Elleth who is self-assured and sharp of mind, though that wasn’t to say that her features weren’t pleasing. Moreover and more importantly, she was a better sort of Elf, with experiences much like Kalin in warcraft and combat, and she already held a high position in Rivendell, so Kalin need not fear she might use him to better her circumstance. She also held the highest trust of both Glorfindel and Elrond, which meant much given that the last Elleth with whom Kalin had gotten involved had ended up trying to help kill and torment his Prince, and had poisoned his King.

Giving his sentry a mildly teasing smile, Legolas cocked one eyebrow while he prompted, “Kalin?”

Clearing his throat, the sentry answered with a half-truth, telling his Prince, “I grew bored in the valley. I have no duties there, of course, although I have been training with the Imladrian warriors and helping Lord Glorfindel’s instructors to teach the Elflings about archery. When Tomas and the two villagers came to the valley asking for help, Elrond wished for someone to accompany the twins, and Reana offered her aid as an escort in place of Glorfindel, who was on his way to Lothlórien to escort the Lady Arwen home. When Elladan and Elrohir told me that they were going on their father’s behest, I jumped at the chance to be of use. Since we found you and Estel here and in need of aid, I am most glad to have come along.”

Legolas was content to see his sentry, as well, though it was mostly due to his being relieved that he could pass along word for Kalin to take to their King before the Prince’s imminent demise. He slowed his gait a little more so that he could walk beside his horse, who tossed his head at the Elf’s mere nearness. With a nod and smile of gratitude for Reana, Legolas took the reins to Arato’s bit and looped them loosely around his wrist. Kalin stalled, as well, to remain beside his charge. Legolas was suddenly certain that Kalin would not soon let him out of his sight – not until he knew that his Prince was well or not in danger, or at least, not until Legolas died. It made Legolas all the gladder that he had been given and taken the chance to spend an intimate night with Estel, since it seemed he would now not have another chance, what with the twins and Kalin here.

Thinking that he likely could answer his own question, still Legolas had to ask, “And Arato? Your mare hasn’t fallen lame, has she?”

Laughing merrily, as Kalin could tell his Prince knew the answer to his farcically innocent question, the elder Wood-Elf told Legolas, “I had my mare moved close to Arato after you left, to keep him company. Arato has been giving the stable hands trouble,” Kalin whispered conspiratorially, as if the horse in question might take exception to being gossiped about, “because he was just as bored as was I, I think. The day of our departure, I had my mare saddled and my bags tied to her when Elladan and Elrohir came through the stable’s inner yard to see if I was ready. Elladan asked me if I was certain I wanted to leave, saying that he couldn’t guarantee I would be back before spring, and thus might not be back in Imladris before your return. And of course, he said your name, which caused Arato to throw a fit. I thought it best just to bring him, rather than to leave him in the stables. Few can calm him when he becomes worried over you, and I didn’t want for him to break a leg or hurt a stable hand if one of them made the mistake of doing as Elladan had done and saying your name. Besides,” the sentry said with a friendly pat for his Prince’s horse and then a friendly smile for his Prince, “Arato was getting fat and lazy inside the stables and needed the exercise.”

Arato contorted his neck around and behind Legolas’ head to snort directly in Kalin’s face in clear retribution for being called fat and lazy, or so it seemed to Legolas and his sentry, both of whom chuckled at the stallion’s antics. Hearing Kalin’s story reminded the Prince of the farmhouse where he and Estel had left Elise’s body – in particular, he was reminded of the horses who had died of starvation and desiccation, and the one who had broken his leg trying to break down his stall to free himself. The Wood-Elf reached up and rubbed Arato’s nose in loving affection. Legolas loved the lowly animals of Arda as much as he loved the higher beings; the thought of his horse pining away in the stables for his master’s presence caused the Prince a twinge of guilt, and he found himself wondering what Arato would do if Legolas were to die. Again, he tried to push away these morbid thoughts.

“I am pleased you brought him, then. And I am pleased you have come,” the younger Silvan repeated, sparing his sentry the truest smile he had yet to offer his friend this morning since greeting him in the road.

Ahead of them, the twins had quieted their idle chatter with Tomas and each other, while around them the boisterous crowd finally gave way as they arrived at the village green. In comfortable silence, the group crossed the bridge spanning the creek and entered the schoolyard. On the porch stood Jakob, Halbarad, and Estel – the latter of whom forwent descending the steps and merely jumped down them, instead, so that he could reach the travellers, though before he went to the twins, the man first quickly assessed the Prince, as if he had been worried by Legolas’ absence. But soon, as one, Elladan and Elrohir left their horses behind and moved into Aragorn’s sturdy body, their arms mashing together as the three entwined each other in a brotherly embrace. Legolas could see as well as sense Estel’s relief to have his brothers there. In quiet murmurs, the three siblings spoke lowly enough that Legolas did not hear over the raucous crowd across the creek, none of whom had followed the Elves and Tomas into the schoolyard. Had he wished to, the Elf could have listened in to what the brothers spoke of, but Legolas did not like to eavesdrop. A tug at the reins he held drew his attention to his side, where Tomas was wordlessly trying to get the Prince to give him control over Arato; the Ranger then handed them to Reana, who with Tomas gathered the twins’ mounts, Arato, and both of their own horses to take to the stables sitting just behind the schoolhouse, where the Ranger and Elleth would likely water and feed the mounts while giving the others the chance to confer.

When Elladan and Elrohir finally let go of their young Adan brother, they went next to Halbarad and Jakob, both of whom were known to the twin Lords of Imladris, and said their welcomes to the Rangers, as well, while Aragorn strode to where Kalin stood with Legolas. To both the Prince and his sentry’s surprise, Estel next grabbed Kalin and pulled him into an equally pleased embrace, showing his pleasure to have the Wood-Elf there. Although at first Kalin’s startlement kept him from responding to this hug, he soon returned it just as fiercely as it was given.

“Well met, Kalin. I’m glad you are here,” he told the elder Wood-Elf, his greeting oddly fervent, as if the words were not spoken out of politeness but as if Aragorn were truly relieved for Kalin’s arrival. Astutely, Legolas assumed Estel was likely gladdened by Kalin’s coming because it meant the sentry could help keep watch over his Prince.

When the sentry and Ranger released each other, Estel then took hold of Legolas’ elbow, uncaring of the audience of Edain across the creek who watched all this without abashment, and pulled the Prince close, saying quietly, “You ran off without me, Greenleaf.” Thinking Estel was chastising him for not telling the Ranger where he went, Legolas might normally have prickled at being spoken to like an Elfling, but currently felt so tired he couldn’t be anything but indifferent. However, as Aragorn tugged the Elf along with him towards where Halbarad was inviting the twins inside the school, Kalin following right behind his Prince, Estel added in mock aggravation, “It isn’t fair you got to greet our brothers first! I hope you haven’t filled their heads with lies about how all this is my fault.”

From his unimpeded arm, Legolas slid his hand over Aragorn’s hand and then spread his fingers over the man’s digits, though he allowed Estel’s hand to remain upon his elbow. Try though he did, he could not find the energy to offer any playful retort, as he might normally do, which did not go unnoticed by Aragorn or Kalin. With Halbarad holding the door open, Elladan, Elrohir, Jakob, and then Estel with Legolas beside him, and finally Kalin all walked inside the schoolhouse. Halbarad shut the door behind them, and Legolas knew then that he had only to sit through the telling of their story and speak of what they must do, ere he could give to Estel what frayed remnants were left of his faer so he could finally rest.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_I did not imagine Kalin would come also, but thank Eru he has,_ Aragorn decided, giving the Silvan sentry another grin, which Kalin returned reflexively if confusedly, for he could not fathom why Estel seemed so pleased to see him. _Kalin can help me care for Legolas. And if I die before Greenleaf, Kalin can try to keep his Prince alive,_ he told himself much how the Prince had thought the same of the twins keeping Estel alive.

Although Reana seemed to have left to aid Tomas with the horses, her presence was also welcomed by Estel. The Elleth was a capable and deadly warrior who had trained under Glorfindel for millennia and had taken on Glorfindel’s expertise and penchant for strategy so greatly that Glorfindel had bestowed upon her his greatest gift – his trust. Reana now acted as his right-hand by overseeing the border patrol and sentinels inside the valley, much like how Raveara was Glorfindel’s left-hand by overseeing the training of the Imladrian warriors. While her talents were likely useless against Elise, she might be of use to them in other ways or if the villagers turned against the Rangers and Elves should the situation turn dourer, which Aragorn still feared possible.

Halbarad was gathering the few adult-sized chairs scattered about the room so that everyone could sit at the only full-sized table together, while Jakob was gathering ceramic tumblers and divvying out the remainder of the morning’s tea to share amongst everyone. When there was a seat and a cup for each, Estel did not wait for anyone else to be seated ere he led the surprisingly quiescent Legolas to the end of the table, pulled a chair from the side to the end so that the two chairs were side by side, and then half pushed the Prince into sitting in one. He then sat in the chair right beside Legolas. A moment later, Kalin did the same in dragging a chair close to his Prince for himself, though he sat just around the corner of the table. Thus, when Estel took Legolas’ hand to hold under the tabletop, there was no one capable of noting how the Silvan responded by taking Aragorn’s hand to slide it under the hem of his tunic, where he then held it against his bare skin with both of his own, pushing Estel’s limb hard against the taut muscles of his belly.

As much as he admired the feeling of the laegel’s smooth and warm flesh, Aragorn knew what Legolas likely did not realize – when anxious, the Elf often did this very thing in compelling Aragorn’s hand against his belly, as if by this touch the Prince was soothed. If it offered Legolas any comfort, then Aragorn was glad for it, but it was unnerving for the Ranger, as well, since it meant that Legolas might be upset or panicked. Moreover, though Aragorn was still warm and did not shiver, Legolas was trembling intermittently. The Adan had to wonder if this was the effect of Elise’s touch, as the man himself had been affected the day before, or if the Wood-Elf were so upset or anxious that he was shaking. Thus, while the others were still making idle chatter, speaking of trivial things for now as they quenched their thirst and reacquainted themselves for a moment before getting down to the crux of the dilemma they faced, with his fingers, Aragorn took to rubbing small circles against Legolas’ belly. Although he hoped to mollify the Elf with this, for some reason, the longer they sat there with his hand upon the Silvan Prince, the more at ease Estel felt and the harder Legolas trembled.

Feeling eyes upon him, Aragorn turned to face Kalin, who was watching both his Prince and Estel with blatant concern. With a mere tilt of his head and brief lift of his eyebrows, Kalin questioned the Ranger as to the welfare of his Prince. And so, because he could not answer Kalin aloud, he sought to give the stalwart Silvan the information he desired by advancing their conversation past the pleasantries the others were still speaking. Most importantly, a familiar and constricting sense of doom began to create a haze over his mind, for in seeing Kalin’s fear for his Prince, Aragorn was yet again reminded that his or Legolas’ life could be forfeit at any moment. And not having yet been given the chance to speak to his brothers about what was occurring, Legolas or Estel might die ere even having the opportunity to be saved, if they did not act with more haste.

Clearing his throat, he gained all of their attention first ere he said, “I hate to interrupt your thrilling conversation about travel routes,” he teased Elrohir, who had been telling Jakob and Halbarad the way they had come, which had shaved off a full day of hard riding to reach the village sooner rather than later, “but let us get on with it. There is much to discuss and little time to do it.”

“Aragorn is right, as usual. Let us hear what advice Lord Elrond has sent,” Halbarad agreed readily.

The elder man shifted in his chair, looked first to Aragorn and then Elladan and Elrohir, opened his mouth to continue, but then seemed to question if he were the one who ought to be leading their palaver. When he finally decided that he might as well be the one to control the conversation, none of the Eldar was paying him any attention, for to the consternation of the humans in the room, the Elves had all turned to the door, where they watched in wait for someone to enter. A few moments later, Aragorn, Halbarad, and Jakob all heard the footsteps upon the porch, and just after, Liandra entered the room without knocking, a man coming in behind her. _I had forgotten that she was bringing Elise’s family here,_ the Ranger ruminated ruefully, the imbroglio of having Elise’s kin here for questioning while not having yet been able to explain to his twin brothers what was occurring making Aragorn ponder whether he ought to have Liandra and the man wait for a while until Elladan and Elrohir were caught up on recent events, or just get the questions over with and hope that they could do so without having to admit to the poor man that a little girl in his family had killed over eighty of his fellow villagers.

Liandra was not at all daunted by the sudden influx of Eldar in the room, nor did she offer them any greeting or explanation for her presence. Instead, the elder woman walked to where Jakob sat, looked at the fiery-haired Ranger expectantly, and once Jakob rose from his chair to give it to the elderly woman, sat upon it with a soft grunt. Jakob grinned widely at the men around the table before he decided to stand behind Halbarad. The man with Liandra came closer to the table, though he did not seem eager to be there and stopped well short of the nearest person, who happened to be Elladan. Aragorn noted that when the man’s curious gaze lit upon Legolas, it flickered away from the Wood-Elf briefly ere it returned in haste. The Ranger watched with aggravated, jealous amusement as the blacksmith tried to pry his eyes away from Legolas, only for his attention to be drawn back to the Elf. 

Once Liandra was settled in her seat, her shawl draped over the back, she referred to the man who had followed her inside, telling them, “This is Wendt. He is the village’s blacksmith. Elise is his niece; her mother, Jenafer, is his foster sister. I thought that his mother and father, Jenafer’s foster parents, were still in the village, but they have gone west to stay with other kin until the danger here has passed. Thus, he is the only other relative of Elise’s family.”

Estel suddenly recalled that he had met this man before. The only other time Aragorn had been in this village was several years ago, when he had come through here when his mare had thrown a shoe. He had stopped for a replacement at the blacksmith’s shop – the very same blacksmith who stood before them all now.

Wendt was an unusually tall man with massive arms and a broad, thick chest, which was likely because he spent most of his days swinging a hammer. His face was smeared in soot, his leather apron bore burn marks from the occasional splatter of molten metal or sparks, and despite the chill in the air, his shirt had no sleeves, which exposed skin as dusky as the soot covering him. He wore a leather cap over his head, but from under the edges grew a tightly curled shock of dark hair that had been tamed into rope-like plaits. All in all, he was a very well built and handsome man. Wendt nodded in greeting at first, giving each man around the table a brief glance, but again, the Adan’s eyes invariably returned to Legolas. With all the other Elves in the room, it seemed ridiculous to think that Wendt was drawn to the Prince’s differentness because he was an Elf, as had the villagers during his and Legolas’ walk into town yesterday with Jakob, when the two village men had not been able to stop gawking at his Greenleaf.

_Must he stare?_ the Ranger thought uncharitably, a desire to stand up and wallop the blacksmith itching under his skin.

“You have no family of your own?” Halbarad asked the villager.

Wendt reluctantly pulled his gaze away from Legolas once more and stated vaguely, a mild blush staining the dark skin of his high cheekbones, “I’ve no need for women.”

“Wendt is the only one to ask for answers, although perhaps we might try to find some of the neighbors, if any of them still live,” Liandra offered dismally. She picked up Jakob’s cup of tea, drank from it, turned up her nose at the amount of honey Jakob had stirred into it, and then set it aside. “But his sister and her family don’t come around the village much, nor do they see much of their neighbors except during harvest, when we all help each other to bring in the year’s crops.”

It occurred to Estel that Liandra spoke of the man’s family, of Elise and his foster sister, as if they lived still. _Does he not know that they are dead?_ He did not relish telling the man this, but would not be surprised if Liandra had not told Wendt, being that she had warned them earlier that she would not be the bearer of bad news to the man.

Halbarad was looking to him for guidance as to how to proceed. Knowing his brothers as he did, Estel decided it best just to question the man now and be done with it, believing the twins would hold their tongues until Wendt was gone, and thus not giving away that they would not understand a word of what was spoken.

Taking a deep breath, Aragorn stopped his idle caressing of Legolas’ bare belly and instead laid his palm over it, while glad for the Elf’s tunic and the tall tabletop that hid this action from view. He told Wendt, “For the sake of your village, we would like to ask you of your family.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, if either of ya'll quit reading, I'm done. That's not a threat. Everyone else buggered off, so without you two (you know who you are), there'd be no point in it! :D So thanks for sticking with me, and enjoy!

Aragorn chose his words carefully. He did not want to outright accuse Elise of being the cause for the village’s suffering, despite that he, Legolas, Liandra, Jakob, and Halbarad all believed this to be the case and had as much proof as could be expected, given that Elise could not be seen. The young girl had been Wendt’s niece, after all, and Estel did not want for the man to become belligerent and perchance unhelpful. Likewise, he did not want to tell Wendt that Elise was now an incorporeal, murderous threat to them all because doing so would eventuate in questions of how they knew this, which would require an explanation of Legolas being capable of seeing the girl’s haunt. Even should Wendt himself not react excessively to this news, he might spread it and create panic in the village, which might eventuate in more deaths.

Though all of this took only a moment’s pause for the Ranger to consider, before Estel could think of how to broach the topic, Wendt walked a few steps closer to the table and asked, “Liandra wouldn’t say much when convincing me to leave off work to come here, but if you want questions answered about Jenafer, and aren’t asking Jenafer, then she must be dead.” The blacksmith crossed his muscled arms over his broad chest. “Is that true? Is my sister dead?”

“I am sorry, but yes, your sister is dead. Legolas,” he said, indicating with a nod of his head toward the Wood-Elf sitting beside him as means of introduction, “and I are the ones who found her. If it is of any consolation, she died as the other villagers died, so did not appear to have suffered.”

Wendt’s face remained impassive at hearing this news, but his whole body teetered backwards almost imperceptibly, the weight of this sudden revelation seemingly knocking him back a bit physically. “Like Liandra said, she was not my sister by blood,” Wendt began, obviously aware that with his dark skin, eyes, and hair, he looked nothing like the blonde haired, fair-skinned woman from the farmhouse. “Her parents were our neighbors, years ago. My father and mother took her in after her parents died from the coughing sickness, back when she and I both were mere babes, but we grew up together and played together from the time we were just out of swaddling clothes, and I love her as a sister. We drifted apart the older we got, especially after she married Galeb, since they stayed to themselves out on their farm. For weeks, I have meant to ride to check on them, even before all this happened, but I’ve been so busy,” he explained, his hard voice becoming brittle the longer he spoke, which evinced the hidden sentiment of his statement. Wendt uncrossed his arms from over his wide chest, but after his arms hung lax at his sides for a second, he crossed them again the opposite way and asked, “What of her little ones? And her man and her man’s father? Are they all dead, as well?”

Quietly, Legolas answered this question, garnering Wendt’s attention away from Aragorn, which given the blacksmith’s strange fascination with Legolas was not difficult to do, “Her infant was in his crib, smiling as if he had died laughing. Her man,” the Elf said, using the human’s vernacular to avoid the potential faux pas of calling him the woman’s husband, in case they weren’t married, “and her man’s father, or who I assume was his father, were also dead, with the elder in the barn, having died while feeding the chickens, I think, and the young man having died while carrying in firewood. None of them appeared to have suffered, either.”

Wendt first nodded at this information before he swallowed thickly, his predominant Adam’s apple bobbing in the thick column of his throat. In a way that unsettled the Ranger sitting beside the Elf, the blacksmith’s obsidian eyes shamelessly wandered over Legolas’ gracefully pointed ears, which stuck out from the braids of his buttery hair and framed the alabaster skin of his fair face and even fairer features. Even the knowledge that he stood before someone who had lived for longer than had all the humans in the settlement lived combined did not seem to incite Wendt into showing any respect for the Prince – or at least, not enough to keep him from gawking. The blacksmith coughed to clear his throat, nodded again, and forcibly tore his gaze away from Legolas, though his regard invariably returned to the Wood-Elf each time he tried to look elsewhere.

“And what of Elise? You didn’t mention finding her. She’s about yea high,” he asked, speaking to Legolas directly this time, while lifting his hand to just below his waist, “blonde like her mother, a delicate, pretty little thing. Always laughing and smiling, that one,” he told them, a brief grin lighting his understandably dour face as he described the dead girl, who had become the haunt who had terrorized the village and its inhabitants for weeks now.

Aragorn doubted his intention of keeping Elise’s actions from the man and found himself wondering, _Perhaps we should we tell him. I know that he might share anything we say with those outside, but if she is his kin – even if only by fostering – then he has the right to know, doesn’t he? It might help him to provide information he would otherwise not think to share._

If the Prince was at all discomfited by Wendt’s ceaseless staring, he did not show it. But then, the Silvan was likely accustomed to such looks from Edain and Elves alike, whether male or female. Legolas answered the question put to him by explaining with obviously sincere sympathy, “I am sorry, Master Human, but she is dead, as well. However, we did not find her at the farm. We found her before your other kin, as she was down by the creek, though as with the rest of your kin and from what we have heard of the other villagers who have died recently, she seemed to have died without suffering, as well.”

Again, Wendt rocked back on his feet a bit ere he rocked forward, which is when he placed a hand upon the tabletop in front of him to steady himself. From this reaction alone, Aragorn had the impression that Elise likely held a special place in the blacksmith’s heart, and her death was harder for him to hear about than that of his sister of her infantile son.

“Down by the creek? Always running away, that one. She would take off through the fields to get to the creek no matter how much Jenafer and Galeb threatened to switch her,” Wendt reminisced fondly, for the first time showing emotion other than the false indifference he had shown them thus far. With one massive, blunt fingered, and deeply calloused hand, Wendt wiped at the moisture gathering in his eyes. “She’s just like Jenafer when Jenafer was young – pretty and frail looking, like a glass bauble, but truly hardy, hardheaded, and willful. Just like Jenafer. Or they were,” the man added softly while pinching the bridge of his nose to try to stem the tears welling in his eyes.

They sat in silence for a few moments to allow the blacksmith the chance to take in the news of his people’s death. During this time, Aragorn looked to his brothers and Kalin, all of whom had no idea of the purpose of this conversation. To the Ranger’s relief, Elladan and Elrohir were respectfully listening to every word said, their identical faces showing their sympathy for the Adan’s loss. Kalin, meanwhile, was not hiding his glare for Wendt, who even now could not seem to stop looking at Kalin’s Prince. _I’m glad I’m not the only one annoyed by Wendt’s ogling,_ he thought in churlish possessiveness of Legolas. _I’m not imagining Wendt’s fascination, then._ Only because Legolas did not seem pestered by Wendt’s staring did Aragorn keep himself from behaving irrationally in telling the blacksmith to mind his manners. With wry humor, Estel advised, _Wait to wallop him for his rudeness until after we have our answers._ Given Kalin’s increasing agitation with the blacksmith, Estel thought that there might be a line to teach Wendt how to respect his elders. Estel took a deep breath to try to regain his wandering focus – he was feeling petty and jealous without true cause, and there were more important matters to which to attend right now.

“I appreciate your telling me of their deaths, but I’m not sure why Liandra couldn’t have told me all this herself. Is there some service you need of me?” the blacksmith asked, referring to his trade. “I’m backlogged on work right now, since two of my apprentices left with their families for safer whereabouts, but if it helps you Rangers, or you Elves,” he added, giving Elladan, Elrohir, and Kalin a cursory, obligatory smile that only turned true when his gaze settled upon Legolas, “then I am willing to put aside all other work for now.”

“We seek information. When Aragorn and Legolas found your family dead on the farm…” Halbarad began ere he trailed off in search for some way to do as Estel was trying to do – that is, to obtain information without giving any away.

Seeing Halbarad flounder, from where he stood behind the older man’s chair, Jakob finished by alluding vaguely, “When they found your kith, there were unusual circumstances.”

To all of their surprise, Wendt responded by throwing his head back and laughing heartily. Once more looking at Legolas and keeping his gaze upon the Silvan though he was answering Halbarad and Jakob, Wendt told those around him, “If you found Emler’s _treasures_ in the root cellar, then I’m sure there was plenty to find unusual on the farm.”

 _Treasures?_ Estel wondered, perceiving as did the others the strange way Wendt said the word, as if Emler’s treasures were a joke or had been a point of contention between the two men. Legolas and Estel had both noticed that the house was built upon a root cellar, but neither had investigated the room, for it had not seemed important at the time.

Intrigued, Aragorn picked up his tumbler of tea, took a long draught of it, and then prompted the blacksmith by sharing his thoughts, “You say ‘treasures’ as if you believe them to be junk.”

Wendt guffawed again and asked, “You saw them, didn’t you? Only Emler and Elise gave a damn about any of it – Emler only because he was a sentimental fool, and Elise only because she thought Emler, with all his outrageous stories, was some heroic adventurer. Wanted to be just like him when she grew up, she used to tell me. Wanted to walk in her grandpa’s hallowed footsteps.”

Aragorn had not seen these ‘treasures,’ no, but had no intention of saying so since he wanted the blacksmith to keep talking. Around him, everyone except Kalin and Legolas watched Aragorn and Wendt in silent absorption of their conversation. Kalin did not seem to care of what they spoke, but was intently affixing his cautionary scowl upon the unnoticing blacksmith, while Legolas was looking off towards the blazing fireplace, though his hands kept a steady, tight press of Aragorn’s hand such that the man’s limb was starting to ache from the pressure with which Legolas used to impel it against the Elf’s belly. Rather than admit he knew nothing of these treasures, Estel implored, “Please. Tell me what you know of them.”

Wendt walked around the head of the table to where Liandra sit. He grabbed a pitcher of water from off the table, and then the tumbler of tea Liandra had deemed too sweet to drink. First draining the tea within, Wendt refilled the cup with water next, all the while looking somewhat miffed, as if annoyed that no one had offered him anything prior to that moment, much less a place to sit – or perhaps the topic of their conversation irked him.

Wendt drank the tumbler empty and refilled it, but before he drained the second cupful, the smith told them, “Emler, Galeb’s pa, used to tell anyone who stood still long enough to listen that he was an adventurer. In truth, he used to be a sneak thief. He never robbed people, by his own admission, but he used to break into abandoned houses. He once told me that he would take the boots off a corpse if he thought he could sell them for a few coins. But his most dangerous escapades, he used to tell us, were the ones where he broke into graves and Orc caches, looking for treasure. He once had trunks upon trunks of items he took from long forgotten crypts all over Eriador. Swords, rings, and other jewelry – anything he could pull out of the graves – although most of the stuff he sold over the years. What’s in the cellar now is just what he couldn’t sell or had grown attached to. None of it is likely worth anything but he couldn’t bear to part with it.”

Halbarad looked around the room to gauge if everyone else was as shocked as was he at hearing this, and then asked with unhidden incredulity, “He stole from tombs? Was he mad?”

Wendt laughed again; the man paced a bit by walking behind the side of the table where Liandra, Elrohir, and Kalin sat, his eyes once more upon Legolas, as if he intended to walk right to where the Prince was. However, as he neared Kalin, the sentry turned in his seat to face the pacing man. Aragorn couldn’t see Kalin’s face, but something thereon must have made Wendt think better of approaching that end of the table, for his step faltered and he turned on heel and paced back towards where Halbarad was seated.

The blacksmith finally answered the older man, saying, “Yes, I think Emler may very well have been mad. He had a couple of accomplices, and the three of them lived immoral lives of drinking, feasting, and enjoying the company of accommodating women. When he got one of those women pregnant, Emler gave up being a sneak thief, took the unwanted child from her after it was weaned, named him Galeb, and settled here, where he has lived ever since. Years later, when Jenafer said she was marrying Galeb, my mother and father were pleased. Galeb was a good man, like his pa – or like his pa eventually became. But to be fair, when he settled here with all that ill-gotten wealth, he sold quite a bit of it piece by piece over the years to help the village and her people. When I was a lad, I remember we had a terrible drought that would have starved us all out. The creek damn near dried up, and what was there we saved for drinking, as there wasn’t enough to water crops. So, Emler dug up one of his chests of treasure, had my pa melt the gold and silver down into ingots, and took them and some jewels up north to Bree. He exchanged probably half his wealth to bring back a caravan of five-hundred bushels of Shire wheat, wagons of gourds and corn, and goats for milk for the young ones, as most of the livestock had died off since the grass had withered and blown away. He rode into the middle of town and began handing out bags, and nobody starved that year. He used to say that what he took was going to waste, and his having it put it to good use. That summer and thereafter, the village agreed, and he was loved around here from that day on.”

Offhandedly and quietly, Legolas murmured as if to himself, “What is buried with the dead should stay with the dead.”

The thus far even-tempered blacksmith bristled to hear the Prince’s ostensible condemnation of Emler’s actions. Pulling himself to his full height, the brute of a man pointed at Legolas and was quick to reply, “Maybe you Elves are different. Maybe you Elves have wealth enough never to have to worry over seeing your kids starve. Or maybe you Elves don’t care enough about anyone but yourselves and would rather the things Emler took rot in the ground along with the corpses, but we take care of our own here, Master Elf,” the blacksmith told the Silvan with impertinent impatience, as if the concept were something Legolas would never understand.

Both Kalin and Aragorn sat up straighter upon hearing the blacksmith’s words, both taking umbrage on the Prince’s behalf, and both of them ready to intervene with their own opinions of Wendt’s accusations. The blacksmith didn’t know Legolas, of course, so didn’t know the Elf was currently fated to die because he had sacrificed his own life, more than likely, in the attempt to save the very villagers about whom Wendt was haranguing the Silvan for not caring.

His voice calm but his words belying his anger, Wendt went on to say, “Like I said. Emler wasn’t always seen as one of us, but when he fed the whole village that year, moods changed. No one cared if he used to be a sneak thief. Besides, the bones in those tombs weren’t using those things he took.”

Legolas had not been arguing against Emler’s actions, but rather than try to correct the man, the Prince dipped his head in silent submission to the smith’s statement, which only infuriated Estel even more, since to Estel, Legolas appeared as if he were humbling himself before the blacksmith. Prepared to put Wendt in his place, Aragorn opened his mouth but was cut off when Halbarad interrupted and did it for him, speaking to Wendt as though he were chastising a child, “I think you have forgotten that last winter, when sickness took twenty lives here in your village and was destined to take more, it was the Eldar from Rivendell who sent aid, who sent Tomas and I with the medicines needed to keep more of your kith from dying – Elves who asked for nothing in return save that you share in kind when next someone else was in need of it.”

Of course, Legolas was not from Rivendell, and everyone but Wendt knew this. Halbarad’s words had the intended effect, regardless, for underneath his dark skin, a flush spread over Wendt’s face and his shoulders fell, as did his anger. The elder Ranger continued, tempering his choler to remind the blacksmith with a bit more patience than displayed in his previous words, “Besides, Legolas has come here to aid you and your village, as have we Rangers, and the others Elves are here to do the same, as well, with no motive other than to be of service to those in need.”

Halbarad, who was typically as slow to anger as he was to laughter, seemed more worked up than would he normally be over so trivial a slight, especially not having the personal connection to Legolas, nor the knowledge of the Wood-Elf’s torment by humans as of late. Yet, Estel was still puerilely pleased for Halbarad’s intervention and enjoyed the blacksmith’s ignominy to be rebuked before the Elves and Rangers in the room.

Legolas slid one hand out from under his tunic, where with the other it had still been pressing Estel’s hand against his belly. This long fingered hand rose to stave off anymore of Halbarad’s indignation on his behalf. “Please, Halbarad. Master Wendt here is upset with the death of his loved ones, I am sure, and has misunderstood my concern for Emler’s actions.” The laegel’s conciliatory tone was a reminder to Aragorn that his lover was a Prince and thus accustomed to being a mediator and acting with diplomacy. Legolas gave the blacksmith a grave smile, adding, “It is not my place to judge Emler, you, or your fellow villagers. I am merely concerned for what potential trouble his doing so might have caused, or be causing now, should his trove of treasure be related to the deaths amongst your kith.”

With Legolas’ tolerant statement, Estel eased back into his chair, having not even realized that he had nearly moved to the edge of the seat in preparation to stand from it. As he leant back, he then realized that he had let his hand fall from his lover’s belly. It was now between Legolas’ upper thighs, where he distractedly had slid his fingers under the inside of one of the Silvan’s thigh. Since Legolas did not seem to care, Aragorn did not remove his hand from this intimate touch, and in fact, the Wood-Elf merely slid his own hands atop the Ranger’s hand. Still, the Elf was trembling as if cold, which upon noticing, made Estel forget his aggravation and wish, _I would that this palaver was over. I’d like to get Greenleaf back into bed, under the covers, and beside me for a while, if it will help his shivering at all._ Yet, they had work to do after this, Aragorn knew, and no time for comfort.

Appearing properly shamefaced, the blacksmith nodded and apologized to the Prince courteously, “I’m sorry, Master Elf. I meant no offense.”

“There is no need for apologies. And please, call me Legolas,” the Prince now offered congenially. As an afterthought, the Silvan introduced the rest of the Elves, saying as he gestured to each one, “This is Kalin, Elladan, and Elrohir. As Halbarad has said, we are only here to be of aid to your village. It is our only concern.”

And with that, Aragorn’s ire for the blacksmith returned merely because Wendt seemed overly pleased with himself for being given the boon of calling the fair Elf by his name. To Estel, the blacksmith looked like a cat with a full saucer of cream before it. Unthinkingly, in his aggravation, Aragorn’s grip became too tight, and the Wood-Elf squirmed as the soft flesh of his inner thigh was aggrieved, which made a contrite Aragorn loosen his hold at once. To make amends, he took to rubbing the spot gently, as though to rub out the ache he had caused. 

Despite Legolas’ assurances that they did not care to judge Emler for his actions, Wendt still must have thought that the Rangers and Elves had the intention to take Emler or his family to task for his ill-gotten goods, and seemed to forget momentarily that the Rangers had come for reasons altogether more important. He offered, “I don’t know what’s left of Emler’s treasure, but you can have it and take it back where it belongs, if that’s what has you all stirred up. I guess I’m the only living relative now, other than my ma and pa, but I can speak for them – we make no claim on it.”

“Now, Wendt. No one wants Emler’s junk,” Liandra assured the blacksmith. She reached up and patted the brawny man upon the arm. “These good Rangers and Elves just needed to clear up the matter as a means to eliminate all possibilities for the cause of the deaths.”

The blacksmith made to answer the herbalist but didn’t have the chance; for the first time, Jakob spoke up, asking, “Wait. You say he stole from tombs. From whose tombs?”

Wendt began his pacing again, once more walking towards Aragorn and Legolas’ far end of the tale, and once more stopping as he got close to where Kalin seethed in palpably murderous agitation. Wendt gave Kalin a confused, concerned look and again turned on heel, away from Legolas. The man shrugged his shoulders as he paced back to the end where Halbarad sat. It seemed to Estel that the blacksmith had warmed up to the topic and did not need much prompting to keep offering information. He answered, “Not from graves of just any ordinary men and women. Jenafer told me Emler said he took it from the tombs of lords and ladies, some of it from the Barrow-Downs, some from crypts so old that the stones were nothing but dust. He didn’t rob the graves of regular folk like us here in the village, or anyone recently deceased.”

Once again, the Elves and Rangers around the table looked to each other to see the same horror in the others’ faces as was on their own. Aragorn was boggled at the implications of this knowledge. _The Barrow-downs? Emler stole from the tombs in the Barrow-downs? Sweet Eru, this Emler was a daring man, or truly a madman, as Wendt claimed._

His mind reeled with possibilities. Aragorn was well acquainted with that part of what had once been part of the kingdom of Anor and later the capital of the realm of Cardolan. The Barrow-downs, called Tyrn Gorthad by the Elves, contained remnants of the civilizations of the first men in ancient days. The land was dotted by low hills, perpetually foggy, and upon many of those hills sat great stone monoliths, crumbling stone towers and buildings, and a multitude of tombs of ancient Edain, many of which contained untold treasure that had been left untouched out of respect for the dead but also out of fear of the undead inhabitants of the area. When the Witch-King of Angmar invaded the Edain realm of Cardolan, some of its inhabitants survived by fleeing to Tyrn Gorthad, though eventually the area became uninhabited when the Great Plague killed most of the remaining population. To keep the area from ever becoming repopulated, the Witch-King sent evil spirits to the Barrow-downs – the Barrow-wights – who claimed the bodies of the ancient men buried there, though the true origin of the wights themselves was not known.

Around Estel, there was utter silence. Only Wendt appeared confused by his audience’s shock to hear how Emler had taken from the cursed tombs of the Downs. Aragorn compared to what he knew of the wights to what he had learnt from Legolas of the haunt, of Elise. _I would never have thought it, being that we are so far away from the Barrow-downs, but as Greenleaf described her, the girl – Elise – does share many similarities with a wight. And yet, it cannot be, can it?_

Unaware of the import of his shared information, Wendt continued on, asking, “What has been done with their bodies? Are they still on the farm? I would like to bury them. Today, if possible, if I can manage to dig the graves before the sun sets. And if not, I will start today and finish tomorrow.”

“We left them as we found them,” Legolas absently responded, for he was caught up in his own thoughts of the implications of Wendt’s information. The Wood-Elf’s hands had become icy cold upon Aragorn’s hand, and unknowingly, Legolas’ fingernails were biting into the man’s skin, while his trembling had become even worse. Aragorn looked to Legolas, hoping to catch his attention to incite the Prince to look at him. He wanted to see his lover’s face to ensure that the Silvan was well, but Legolas looked to Wendt as he told him, “Except Elise. I carried her from the creek where we found her to the farmhouse, and I left her inside with her mother, father, and brother, where she would be safe from further predation. I warn you, however, that when we found her, her body had not been spared by the carrion birds. But we rolled her in one of our blankets, so you need not see her in that condition.”

Aragorn was pulled from his own wildly rampant thoughts and fears for Legolas’ increasingly strange behavior by Wendt’s grateful smile for the Prince. In that appreciative beam was something Estel had seen expressed for the beautiful Wood-Elf often enough before, especially ere he had claimed the Silvan as his lover – desire. Wendt did not even try to shroud his interest in the Prince; for the moment, all thoughts of Elise and of his and Legolas’ imminent deaths gave way to jealousy once more, though he knew he had nothing over which to worry. Legolas was as much his as he was Legolas’ but it bothered him no less to see the blacksmith’s unveiled lust.

With honest thankfulness, Wendt bowed his head briefly, clasped his hands at his trim waist, and told the Silvan, “I thank you for that. I truly do. It is heartening to know that you gave thought to her when you had no cause to care for her otherwise, and brought her back to her family.”

“Tell me of her,” Legolas suddenly asked Wendt, surprising both Wendt and the others in the room. Perhaps the blacksmith thought Legolas was being sympathetic or friendly in asking this, or perhaps he even thought Legolas was flirting, but Aragorn could hear the desolation in his lover’s voice. Kalin, Elladan, and Elrohir could sense their friend’s saturnine fascination over the topic but knew nothing of Elise other than that she was Wendt’s deceased niece, so wondered why the Prince so desperately wanted to hear of her, while Jakob, Halbarad, and Liandra looked to Legolas with morose worry, since they knew just why Legolas wished to question Wendt on this matter. The Woodland Prince implored, “Of Elise. Tell me of her.”

Still wearing his hungry smile, Wendt appeared pleased to be asked. Picking up the long forgotten tumbler of water he had poured for himself, the blacksmith took a drink from it. “Elise? Well, like I said, she was just like her mother, but she was a lot like Emler, also – or how I imagine Emler must’ve been when he was her age. The two of them were thick as thieves, actually, and rarely apart. She’d rather be out in the woods with him than in the house with Jenafer or in the fields with Galeb.”

Wendt spoke of the girl as if the loss of her had yet to sink in and his mind could not yet decide whether to relegate her to the living or the dead, which was strangely apt given that she lingered between the two. He continued, “She was a good girl, though, and lively. Has a smile that could sweeten honey. And she was always trying to sneak into the cellar to look through the treasures in Emler’s chests. She had a habit of stealing bits and pieces and taking them down to the creek to bury, as if she wanted her own treasure like Emler had, but also so that he couldn’t find them to take them back. No matter how often he ran her out and threatened to switch her, she would find her way back in. But Emler thought the sun rose and set in Elise’s smile and never stayed mad for long.”

During Wendt’s reminiscence, Legolas pried Aragorn’s hand from where it was curled between and under the Elf’s thigh. He surreptitiously slid the agreeable man’s limb back under the hem of his tunic, and then as it had been before, pressed Estel’s hand against his belly so tightly that Aragorn could feel his lover’s heartbeat beneath the Elf’s muscled, smooth flesh. Through this entire discourse, the twins and Kalin had managed to remain quiet – Kalin because he was out of his depth and more interested in keeping watch over his Prince and the twins because they could sense the undercurrent of secrecy in the room. But he could feel his brothers’ confusion. Elladan and Elrohir had come to this village knowing only what Tomas and the two villagers had known – that is, that some strange illness or event was causing the people of the settlement to drop dead with no sickness or sign of injury. Aragorn thought it likely that his father and brothers had assumed some human illness was the cause behind the troubles here; seeing his brothers’ mystification now, Estel realized that this was the first hint to the twins that the cause might be something other than sickness, and Estel was eager to remove Wendt from the schoolhouse so they could confer over the matter.

Legolas’ rapid, thready heartbeat under the palm of Aragorn’s hand fomented this desire greatly. _We have no more time to waste,_ he told himself, for beneath his fingers, he was quite certain he was feeling the end of his Silvan lover.

Aragorn looked around the room and asked of his fellow Rangers, “Have you any other questions?”

Wendt was staring off at the far wall and surprisingly not at Legolas, as he had been through much of their discussion, but realizing that his use to them was now at an end, the blacksmith stopped thinking of Elise and the memories Legolas’ query had roused, and instead gave the Silvan Prince an eager, hopeful smile. “Is that all you needed?”

When Halbarad and Jakob shook their heads at their Chieftain’s question, Aragorn forced himself to smile at Wendt while saying, “I believe we are finished. We will take up no more of your time. Thank you, Wendt.”

His dark brows raising in surprise upon his soot-smeared forehead, the man must have wondered at the utility of his answers. He looked around the room much as Estel had just done, though yet again, his gaze lingered upon Legolas, and once he had looked at each person there, his gaze returned to the Prince, who did not even notice as he was looking down to where his and Aragorn’s hands were entwined and under the cloth of his tunic and hidden from the sight of everyone by the table’s top.

“Yes, thank you, Wendt,” Liandra told the blacksmith. With some difficulty, she rose from the chair by using the table before her to steady herself, and then took Wendt’s arm in hand to press him into walking towards the door. “You have been of great help. We will let you get back to work now, dear.”

“I’m not certain what I’ve said or done to be of aid, but I am glad of it. If you need anything else – any more information, or something I can forge or fix – then you know where to find me,” the blacksmith replied. If anyone else existed in the room for Wendt just then, the blacksmith gave no indication he saw them, as he seemed to be speaking directly to Legolas.

“We will, we will,” the elderly woman dismissively agreed. Liandra was just as eager to be rid of Wendt, as was Estel, though it was because for the sake of her village, she greatly desired answers and thought from the Eldar and Rangers’ reactions to Wendt’s responses to their questions that she might now have them.

 _I have never been happier to see someone leave,_ he complained. As much as the blacksmith had truly facilitated their pending discussion, Aragorn found it hard to think straight when dealing with Wendt’s prurient curiosity for Legolas.

At the door, Liandra spoke quietly to Wendt, again telling him that he was helpful and that she would speak to him later, and even offering to find him help to bury his dead later, if he needed it. With that, Liandra shooed the man out, shut the door after him, and walked back to her chair, where she plopped back down into it and looked at the Eldar and Rangers around her in clear expectation.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is half the intended chapter. It grew overlong so I had to split it. I tell you this because it ends rather abruptly -- not in a cliffhanger kind of way, though. So, thanks for reading! Enjoy.

Legolas turned away from Liandra’s pointed, questioning, and searching gaze. Irascibly, Liandra tapped her long fingernails against the table’s top to ask simply, “Well?”

“Yes. Well, indeed,” Elladan replied with just as much impatience as the Adan healer. The morning was growing later. Soon, it would be midday, meaning that a good portion of the daylight would have passed them by without the chance for action, should this discussion end up taking as long as Legolas feared it might. To the tight and aggrieved grin Elladan spared the Wood-Elf, Legolas gave a momentary flash of a smile in return. For some reason, the twins were set upon having Estel answer their questions, not Legolas, for which the Prince was relieved. Perhaps this was because they wished to show respect for Aragorn in deference to his being the Chieftain of the Rangers there with them, but Elladan and Elrohir would soon truly lose their patience and begin treating their human brother as the young man they saw him as, should they not obtain their answers soon. Legolas heard all this in Elladan’s strained voice as he prompted, “What was all that about, Estel?”

Aragorn was typically a man of few words when it came to speaking to strangers or in a crowd, or even when he and Legolas were alone, though in the latter case, little needed to be said between the two lovers. As to the former, his reticence wasn’t because he was nervous of other people, but because it was in his nature not to use pompous speech or waste the time of others when what he said could be relayed succinctly. For that reason, Estel did not respond immediately, for he was gathering his thoughts before answering Elladan’s query and Liandra’s exasperation. Legolas watched Aragorn’s face to see the slight knitting and then relaxing of his brows and the faint lines around his eyes and mouth becoming more pronounced as he considered the awful topic he was appointed to discuss, but when Legolas gave his lover’s hand a squeeze of encouragement, all somberness fell from the man and Aragorn reacted by facing the laegel and smiling at the Elf with unconcealed and unrelenting adulation. Even the numbness of his emotions caused by Elise’s curse could not stop him from feeling the joy of being on the receiving end of the Adan’s loving grin. The Elf could not help but to smile back in true, amorous affection.

Ere Aragorn began, though, and after a brief snort of incredulous laughter, Halbarad asked Estel and Legolas, “Wait a moment. Neither of you actually looked in the root cellar, did you? Neither of you knew of Emler’s treasure either, eh? At least, neither of you mentioned it when you told me of your finding the family at the farm, anyway.”

Beside the Prince, Estel laughed dryly in response, causing his thigh to jostle against the Elf’s thigh where they laid flush, so close together were their seats placed. “No, we had no reason to look in it, though I noticed it, as Greenleaf likely did, as well. But no, I had no idea of what laid under the house.” To Liandra, the man praised, “It is good that you thought to speak to Elise’s family. Wendt has given us information that we might never have discovered otherwise. Whether it will be of use, I do not yet know, but it gives us some place to start.”

During this last exchange, Legolas had been staring off into the blazing fire at the opposite end of the room, but now turned his attention to the twins and his sentry. Elladan and Elrohir were growing evermore irritated at being left in the dark, it seemed, or so Legolas judged by the way in which they glowered at Estel. When he looked to Kalin, however, Legolas noted his sentry was watching him without abashment.

_Does he know? Can he feel it?_ the Wood-Elf suddenly feared of his lifelong friend and confidante.

Legolas thought it very likely Kalin could perceive the darkening of his Prince’s faer, which was evidenced by how Kalin stared at Legolas with such apprehension. Ever was Kalin worried for his charge, though, and Legolas hoped Kalin was merely concerned over the strangeness of what was happening, rather than feeling the palpable dimming of his Prince’s soul. Legolas looked away from Kalin. Of Kalin, Estel, Elladan, and Elrohir, all of whom would be highly upset with the Silvan Prince should they find out what he had been doing to bolster Estel’s faer, Kalin would be the most distraught, Legolas knew. His sentry would feel betrayed by his Prince’s actions. The elder Wood-Elf had spent most of his life and literally all of Legolas’ life trying to ensure his Prince’s well-being and relative good cheer, he had even recently nearly lost his own life in the selfless effort to save his Prince, and for the younger Wood-Elf to throw that away, in Kalin’s thinking, would be unforgivable to the older Silvan.

For that reason, Legolas found himself praying, _Please, do not let them figure it out. I would not suffer Kalin’s anger, the twins’ sorrowful sympathy, or Estel’s guilt. Let me just serve this purpose, Ilúvatar, if it is your will, and then pass on to Await._ But from the corner of his eye, he could see as Kalin opened his mouth as though to ask something, only to shut it with a look around at the humans who were strangers to him. The younger Wood-Elf considered, _If he_ does _know, then he will not speak of it with Liandra, Halbarad, and Jakob around. He will want to wait until we are alone, or alone with the Noldor and Estel. My task is hurried, then,_ he told himself. If Kalin had sussed out what was occurring between his Prince and the Ranger, then Legolas had limited time to ensure that Estel’s soul was as filled with life and light as he could make it, ere Legolas was kept from doing so again.

With this in mind, Legolas twisted the fingers of one hand over the man’s hand, the palm of which had grown damp from where it was pressed to the Elf’s warm belly. He closed his eyes for a moment and focused the whole of his being upon the sensation of Aragorn’s skin touching his own. It was with this contact that he tried to infuse his faer’s flagging verve into the Ranger’s faer, such that even now, although Estel was strangely merry from feeling so well, Legolas felt weakly apathetic. This weakness did not stem from his body or mind, exactly, but from some indefinable part of himself; it was the same part that had suffered from sickness when the scar upon his leg had held its regency over his mind, the very part that had bowed under Mithfindl’s abuse and taunts, broken entirely during his agonizing ordeal in the pit at the back of the Troll cave, and then been remade after his escape from it. The very part of himself that made Legolas who he was felt to him to be shrinking. Soon, even if his rhaw lived for a while more beyond the utter desolation he willingly caused his faer, the Wood-Elf would be nothing but a body without soul. His body would not last long after that, regardless. Legolas felt it to be a righteous sacrifice to save Estel’s life.

The twins had given Aragorn as much time to think as they were willing to allow. Elrohir tried to get his human sibling to speak, reminding his brother, “Estel. We have travelled a long way to find out what is happening in this village.”

Again, though, before Estel could begin, he was interrupted. This time, it was Jakob to interrupt. The fiery-haired man said aloud what he, Halbarad, Aragorn, and Legolas had all been thinking since Wendt’s confession about from where Emler’s treasures originated. “So, Elise had access to objects from the graves in the Barrow-downs. She liked to steal them out from under her grandpa’s nose and take them to the creek to bury them, which is just where she was found dead, right? Surely none of this is a coincidence,” the Jakob exclaimed, his smile wide and pure as he hoped that with this knowledge they might be closer to finding an end to both Elise and the looming deaths of Estel and Legolas.

Halbarad sucked in a noisy, painful sounding breath, as if he had just been sucker punched in the gut. In fragments of thought, the elder Ranger followed Jakob’s reasoning, “The wights fear light and can’t be hurt by weapons. Their touch is supposedly icy. I’ve never seen one, but I’m told they appear like shadows come to life, as if they draw the life from the living world around them, while both their touch and their voices are mesmerizing. It sounds damn near just how Legolas described Elise, doesn’t it?” he concluded to Aragorn while looking to the Elf in question for affirmation of this.

Legolas could only nod, for indeed, now that the comparison had been made, he could see the similarities between Elise and the wights. The Ranger removed his hand from Legolas’ grip so that he could brush his hair out of his face with both hands. When done, the man absently returned his hand to the juncture between Legolas’ thighs, where it laid intimately along the fold where the Elf’s upper leg met his lower torso. In response, Legolas lifted that leg a bit in silent invitation for Aragorn to slide his fingers under the inside of the Silvan’s thigh, and to his pleasure, Aragorn did just that without hesitation. The outermost of the man’s fingers lay innocently but familiarly against the Elf’s cloth covered shaft, while his thumb swept along the muscle of Legolas’ upper thigh. As Aragorn considered Jakob and Halbarad’s supposition, his grip upon the Prince’s tender flesh became ever tighter, just as it had earlier when speaking to Wendt.

“Yes, but this is not the Barrow-downs,” Aragorn finally argued without conviction.

Aragorn was clearly unaware of how painful his grip upon Legolas’ leg had become, else he would have stopped, but the Silvan did not try to force the Ranger into releasing him. Right now, it was by this touch that he imparted his faer’s light into the human, and he did not want for Estel to cease his gentle caresses along the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, for Legolas could well imagine that he would never be touched so intimately by another ever again, and so set his mind to remembering this simple affection much how he had spent last night searing into his memory the feeling of having Aragorn’s shaft glut his welcoming body. Even now, a couple of hours after rising from a night and then a morning of pleasure with the Adan, the aching opening to Legolas’ body felt empty, just as he told Estel when first he had removed his shaft from the Elf. Had he his way again, and should he still be alive for it, Legolas would spend tonight in the same way as they had last night – that is, with Aragorn inside him.

With a huff of frustration, the Rangers’ Chieftain went on to say, “I have never seen a wight, either, but I know people who have, including my own two brothers here,” he alluded by nodding towards the increasingly perturbed twins. “Elladan and Elrohir could tell you that where a wight’s eyes ought to be are pale, frosty blue lights – like sunshine reflecting off the frozen veneer of a lake’s surface. And they do not stray far from their tombs; doing so puts them at risk, for the only way to kill a wight is with light or fire. They cannot travel during the day and cannot just hide in a cave, as would an Orc or some other beast afraid to travel in the sunlight. However, Greenleaf said this one’s eyes are like burning embers of coal, red and fiery, not like cool blue ice. And the wights control the corpses of the dead buried in the tombs of the Downs, while this one is no real thing, not controlling any corpse that we know of, but just a bodiless specter.” Estel looked to Legolas to ascertain that the Prince had no disagreement with his rendition of the description the Prince had given him. When no disagreement came, Aragorn shook his head at Halbarad and Jakob to say, “Besides, Greenleaf saw her during the day as well as the night, so she did not fear the light, nor was she harmed by it, taking into account all that happened last night.”

Jakob and Halbarad quieted as they pondered Estel’s logic; despite the dissimilarities, the similarities could not be ignored. Much as could a wight, the haunt had compelled Legolas into reaching out for her, while she also had invaded the Prince’s mind, taking control over it to show the Silvan what she wanted for him to see. Aragorn could attest that her touch was icy cold, as could Legolas. And when first explaining to Aragorn of the haunt, Legolas claimed then that she appeared to pull the very life from the forest around her.

Snorting in incredulous disbelief, Elrohir pushed back his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, his ability to stomach the Rangers’ exclusive conversation having come to its end, it seemed. “I don’t understand. Are you saying a Barrow-wight is the cause of all the trouble in the village? Explain this, Estel,” the younger twin demanded irritably.

Soon after, the elder twin pushed his own chair back, as well, having had enough secrecy as had his younger, and crossed his legs at the knee. “Yes, enough of this,” the elder Noldorin twin said, evincing his exasperation now that he no longer needed to hide from Wendt his lack of erudition on the matter. “Just what in Udûn is going on?”

As he often did when his brothers’ scolding grated his nerves, Aragorn started to respond to his Elven siblings’ anger with facetiousness; he squashed this response quickly, though, before the flippant remark upon his lips could set the twins to bickering. Perhaps the twins could see this impertinence playing out upon Aragorn’s face, for Elrohir uncrossed his arms and Elladan uncrossed his legs, they both sat forward, and they both appeared on the verge of lecturing the Adan. Estel subdued and held up his hands to stave off their sermon, which surprisingly worked.

“Speak quickly, brother, before we lose our patience and throttle you!” the younger Noldorin twin criticized on behalf of himself and the elder Noldo, while flashing his human sibling a smirk belying his true feelings behind his and Elladan’s ominous, albeit empty threat. Elladan then added to his twin’s admonishment, “You know we do not like being ignorant, no matter if it is not your fault that we sit here in confusion.”

Legolas closed his eyes again when the effort to keep them open became too much. It wasn’t until he felt a hand upon his trembling knee – a hand he could immediately tell did not belong to Aragorn – that he managed to pry his lids open, but upon finding Kalin attempting to garner his attention, the Prince closed them again at the sight of his perpetually anxious sentry’s face. “My Prince, please,” Kalin whispered softly, but not so softly that everyone in the room wasn’t then straightaway fixated upon the two Silvan Elves. His fellow Wood-Elf moved off his chair to kneel just in front of Legolas and then used the hand not upon his Prince’s knee to push a stray lock of Legolas’ hair out of the way, tucking it into the sweep of hair pulled back into a plait hanging from the crown of the Elf’s head. Now better able to see into the younger Silvan’s face, Kalin watched his charge for mendacity or evasion as he asked, “What is wrong?”

_He can feel it, then. He knows._ Kalin would not be dissuaded from discovering what ailed his Prince – not by the curious audience of mostly strangers around them, not by his Prince’s ignoring of him, and not by the more pressing matters of which the others wished to speak.

Elladan and Elrohir’s desire for knowledge was diverted momentarily by Kalin’s plea to Legolas. It was only then that the rest of those in the room seemed to notice just how poorly the Prince fared. Indeed, Legolas cursed to himself in his mind as Estel extracted his hand from the Elf’s tight hold so that he could shift in his chair to see the Wood-Elf better. Leaning forward and towards the Silvan, Estel asked just as had Kalin done, saying anxiously, “Greenleaf? Are you well?”

“I am fine. Only tired,” he spoke, mustering as much volume and forcefulness into his speech as possible, though in the end, the laegel only ended up muttering his unheeded explanation.

Undaunted by their Woodland friend’s attempt to dissuade their attention, Elladan and Elrohir both stood and came to the end of the table, as well, and tried to get to Legolas. With Kalin and Estel crowded around the Prince, neither could reach the young Silvan how they would have liked. Of course, on the way to the schoolhouse, the twins had already taken note of Legolas’ haggard features, the dark circles under his eyes, and his strange demeanor. They had put off questioning the Prince because Legolas had promised them to speak of it later. It was later; the twins would not be put off any longer, for if Kalin were worried for Legolas, it was most likely Legolas was at risk of some sort.

“Alright, Greenleaf. Tell us now. Are you injured? Is it the same ailment as a couple of months ago?” Elladan asked while hovering with his twin just behind Kalin, his words vague but his meaning clear to all those who knew of the Silvan’s recent excruciation and sorrow.

“No, brothers,” Estel answered on his lover’s behalf. Legolas might have normally been peeved to have Estel speak for him, but currently, the Prince found it difficult to keep his eyes open, much less try to evade the twins’ mothering with a suitable explanation. Wrapping his arm around Legolas’ waist to support the Elf in staying upright, Aragorn began to illuminate both Legolas’ state and the happenings in the village by telling the Noldorin twins and Silvan sentry, “It is not injury – not exactly. And no, it is not the same ailment as months previous. It is a new ailment, one from which I suffer, as well, and one whose story is tied into the tribulations occurring here in the village. Sit, please, brothers, and we will speak of it.”

With his eyes closed still, Legolas did not see as the twins and sentry all exchanged vexed glances over his head. Elrohir took his reluctant brother’s arm and led him back to their seats. They would not disgrace Legolas by forcing their care upon him in front of Halbarad, Jakob, and Liandra, long though they did to get their hands upon their Silvan brother. When both twins were seated once more, Elrohir complained, “When Tomas and the two men who came with him brought their request to Ada, Ada and ourselves thought it to be human illness afflicting the village. But after listening to your conversation with the blacksmith, I assume we have a much different, much more serious problem on our hands.”

“Sit, Kalin,” the Prince ordered his sentry in a whisper. He once again pried his eyes open and smiled at the elder Wood-Elf. “This story may take some time. I promise you. I am only tired. Let us have this story over and done with so I can rest for a while,” he oathed and was pleased when Kalin nodded, since despite the overwhelmingness of his concern, he no more wanted to disgrace his Prince with his cossetting than did the twins. Moreover, having Legolas promise to rest afterwards made the sentry want for their conversation to proceed quickly, also, and so, reluctantly, Kalin rose from the floor to settle upon the edge of his own chair, though he kept his eyes always upon Legolas and was ready to leap up and to the Prince at the least sign of his charge’s further suffering.

It pleased Legolas to lean into the side of Estel’s body; in response, Aragorn tightened his hold of the Elf’s waist. With this contact, he could do as he had promised himself and extrude what remained of the wavering light of his ever-darkening faer into the Adan. Yet, the thought suddenly occurred to him, causing his fatigued heart to thrum rapidly with the folly of his actions, _They will need me still. If the twins or Kalin cannot see Elise, they may require me to see her, to speak to her._ Legolas continued resting against Aragorn but tried to stem the flow of his vitality into the man. He had given of himself too quickly and too much, he now saw, since his work was not yet done. _I must be more careful. I cannot die without seeing to it that Estel has the chance to live._ Should Elise’s withering curse not have been desiccating the Elf’s parched faer, rest and time might have worked to replenish his soul, but with her bane already debilitating the strength of his faer in addition to his decanting it into Estel, the Prince needed to be more cautious. Neither he nor Estel had the luxury of time to recover.

“Liandra, I am sorry, I have only just realized that you have not met my brothers or our friend. This is Elladan, and this is Elrohir, while this is Kalin,” Estel told the elderly healer, pointing at each twin and then the sentry as he said their names, before saying to the Elves, “and this is Liandra. She is the village’s herbalist and healer. She has been helping us in gaining the villagers’ compliance and trust, and it was her good thinking that led us into questioning Wendt for information.”

Although they nodded to the woman in greeting, Elladan was eager to return to the topic of greatest interest to them, which would eventuate into finding out what ailed Estel and Legolas. “And the man, Wendt. The blacksmith. Who was he? Why did you question him?”

The Ranger appreciated his Elven brothers’ haste, for after having seen how poorly Legolas was doing now, Estel felt the need for alacrity more keenly once again. “Wendt is the uncle of the girl whom we believe is the cause of the deaths here. Elise is the girl’s name.”

No less bewildered than before, Elladan and Elrohir shifted impatiently in their chairs, moving in nearly simultaneous, mirrored motions as they sought more comfortable positions, and finding comparable positions, as well. Aragorn then looked to Halbarad, offering him the chance to speak his piece first, since it would be most helpful to tell the story as chronologically as possible so as to avoid confusion.

Halbarad did as his Chieftain wordlessly bid. He wiped at his mouth, the calloused, dry skin of his hands causing his whiskers to whisper as his palm slid over them. “When we sent Tomas, we knew nothing of what was occurring here, and so thought it was illness, as you say that Lord Elrond assumed. All we knew at the time to tell you was what we were told – that the population of the village has been reduced by a quarter, though now it is more like a third, with more than eighty villagers dead that we know of thus far, and at the time, with no discernable cause for their deaths.”

Having heard all this already and having no part in its telling for now, Aragorn and Legolas kept to themselves in the cozy ways of lovers. Although neither spoke, Estel had his forehead pressed to the side of the Elf’s head, as if they were in deep and private conference. Legolas laid his hand upon the man’s leg and massaged the thick muscles comprising the Adan’s strong thigh. He tried to keep his eyes closed, but upon the strong and distinct feeling of eyes upon him, the Prince looked at those around him to find Jakob was watching his Chieftain and the Wood-Elf. From where he stood behind Halbarad’s chair, his arms folded upon the back of it and his weight leant upon his arms, the young Ranger smiled at Legolas when he saw how the Silvan caught him staring. In that smile, Legolas found blithe acceptance and understanding; Jakob was not bothered in the least that his Chieftain embraced a Wood-Elf in the manner of lovers, it would seem. With his own death imminent, the Prince had not cared to keep his and Estel’s relationship hidden any longer; with the emotional torpor spawned by Elise’s touch inhibiting his fear of how Estel might suffer loss of reputation or respect for his choice in bedfellows, Legolas was nonetheless relieved. Jakob appeared content to see his Chieftain happy, which was enough for Legolas. He smiled back at Jakob and let his eyelids slide shut again. The light from the window behind the Ranger seemed painfully bright to him; it burned his sensitive eyes.

Halbarad was telling the twins, “When Jakob and I arrived, we fully expected an outbreak of pox or food poisoning or the like, and for the village’s healer to be inept.” Halbarad gave Liandra an apologetic smile, admitting, “We’ve since learnt better about the aptness of their healer, of course, and seen for ourselves that there is no evidence of disease whatsoever. None of the dead are injured, either, nor show signs of poison or of attack. Jakob and I devised several measures to try to eliminate possible causes, such as asking the people to boil their drinking water, avoid eating from their stores of grain, refrain from the locally brewed spirits – but nothing stopped the deaths during those first several days. When after those several days we noticed all of the deaths since our arrival had occurred after sunset, I then asked Liandra to help me institute a voluntary curfew. I asked for the villagers in the outlying farms to come inside the village proper. Fewer died after that. It was just a hunch,” the elder Adan explained somewhat sheepishly, his intuition seemingly trivial in comparison to the astute perceptivity of the Eldar around him, but no less useful, as it had turned out.

Halbarad clarified to the twin Lords of Imladris, “I told the people to keep their homes well lit at night with fires, candles, and lamps, and not to venture beyond the light. Those people who followed this suggestion were safe, and those who did not soon learnt the hard way, losing family members while sometimes, whole families died. Once everyone began keeping their homes well-lit, the deaths stopped entirely, save for a few instances where someone walked outside in the dark, thinking themselves safe, or such as the family who ran out of oil and candles and waited too late to try to stock up for the night. Otherwise, we could establish no pattern to the killings. At least, not until Aragorn and Legolas arrived with new information.”

Expectantly, the twins now were looking to Legolas and Estel. The Wood-Elf hoped his human lover would not shirk the task of telling their part of the tale, since he did not feel he could. To his relief, Aragorn was eager to set upon this task. The man cleared his throat, his chest vibrating against the Elf’s arm where it was pressed against the Adan’s torso, and took up the thread of conversation, saying, “Greenleaf and I were staying at a lake a full day and night’s walk from here. From the first night up until several weeks later, when we left, Legolas felt we were being watched, but we could find no tracks or evidence of any being nearby, save for the usual animals one might expect around a lake. We decided to continue on southwest, as intended, before turning northerly to Bree to seek Halbarad.”

Aragorn looked to Legolas at this point, which the Elf did not see with his eyes closed, though he felt his lover’s regard. The twins and sentry must be told about Legolas seeing the haunt, but the Ranger did not wish for his brothers to hound the laegel over it, nor did the Prince wish to increase Kalin’s incessant anxiety for his welfare. And so, it was with hesitancy Aragorn continued, “As we followed along a deer trail, Legolas stopped me. He saw something there by a downed tree trunk. Something I could not see.”

Mildly interested as to what his kith would think of all this, Legolas looked up briefly to find that Elladan, Elrohir, and Kalin were all listening raptly to Aragorn’s account. Even Jakob, who had heard the barest bits of this story from Halbarad, had his full attention upon his Chieftain’s story, since he had yet to hear the details. Legolas thought Aragorn must be deciding how best to explain without making the Prince out to sound like a madman, for it took him a moment ere he continued by telling his audience, “Greenleaf said he saw an Adan girl standing by the trunk. At the time, he wanted only to leave quickly and we did not speak of what he saw, but later, he told me that she was pale of skin and hair, wore a sackcloth dress with no shoes, and had no cloak on despite the cold.”

Ever had the twins been able to discern the truth of matters or extrapolate events that had happened without their presence, all from the scantest of specifics. Elladan showed his propensity for this now as he asked, “Elise? Wendt’s niece. She is the one you saw?”

“How could that be?” the younger twin asked his elder before Aragorn could respond. “Estel said he did not see her.”

Aragorn gave the Wood-Elf’s waist a tender hug as he paused before replying; the twins were watching the pair expectant of an answer to their conundrum. If Estel thought Legolas might wish to take over the telling of this, he was mistaken. When the Prince remained quiet, the Ranger began again. “Yes, it was Elise, as we later learnt. And no, I could not see her. I thought Legolas to be seeing things,” the man told his Elven brothers, both of whom, along with Kalin, perked up at hearing this, for they well knew of how Legolas had hallucinated before, when trapped in the pit at the back of the Troll cave. To Legolas’ relief, Estel did not elaborate for the benefit of Liandra, Jakob, or Halbarad, which was likely because the Ranger did not wish to cast doubt upon the Silvan’s sanity. “Again, we fled the area and it was only later that Greenleaf told me the girl was colorless, diaphanous, and neither her hair nor her clothes moved in the wind. Where her eyes ought to have been were two glowing red orbs, like burning coals. She did not move or speak to Legolas. She disappeared without a trace.”

If the twins or Kalin had any doubts about Legolas claiming to have seen a specter, they did not yet voice them. In private, later perhaps, they might ask more of this or conjecture as to why the Prince could see what Aragorn could not, but with Estel finally speaking and with an audience of humans around, the Eldar did not want to interrupt the telling of the story for which they had impatiently waited to hear.

Again, Estel gave Legolas’ waist a comforting squeeze. “We carried on, stopping only once to eat and speak for a moment, ere we came to the creek which eventuates into the watercourse through this very village; seeing the creek is what reminded me of the nearness of this settlement. We decided to venture here for safety and perchance for word of any strange happenings in the forest.”

Perhaps thinking that this was the worst of what they would be told, Elladan and Elrohir looked to each other, their stoic, solemn faces sharing a breadth of information between them that two other people could not have hoped to convey with words. Before the twins could get lost in their shared thinking, Aragorn continued in a hurry, which thereby regained their attention, “We followed the creek for a while longer, until late that night, Greenleaf spotted a body lying near the bank. It was the very same girl whom he had seen earlier that day, whose presence he had felt at the lake and during our trek through the woods. Legolas was inspecting her body to see if he could tell how she died. He turned to me to speak. The next I knew, I was falling through the air towards the corpse, having been pulled off my feet by Legolas. The haunt was standing behind me, her hands out to grab or touch me, and Greenleaf yanked me away in hopes of keeping me from her grasp, while placing himself between us.”

Although Estel was doing a fine job of relaying the events, Legolas felt the need to interrupt here, for there was something that Aragorn had yet to say that needed to be explicated so that the others would understand the danger of Elise’s touch. “The light bent away from her. By the trunk that morning but also by the creek. The vibrancy of life was voided near her, as if she pulled the life from the forest, or as if it fled her nearness. I saw her hands reaching for Estel and knew that I could not let her have him.” While he was speaking, every eye turned to him and the room quieted of all noise – Jakob’s boots stopped clacking as he quit his pacing, Halbarad stopped fiddling with his clanking teacup, and Liandra stopped rocking back and forth in her chair, which had caused it to squeak, being that it was not meant to rock. “I am sorry,” he apologized to Elladan and Elrohir. “I was not fast enough. She touched him, my friends, and her touch is pulling the life from Estel even now.”

The Ranger’s hand, which held onto the Elf’s waist on the opposite side on which Aragorn sat, tightened to hear the laegel’s sorrowed apology.

“She touched you?” Elrohir asked, followed by Elladan saying, “You are sure of this?”

“I am. I wasn’t at the time, but since then, I have grown certain of it.” Rather than let the twins linger on this topic, Aragorn soldiered on and related the rest of what had happened there by the creek. “The girl, Elise, whose name we did not know at the time, reached out for Legolas. She showed him a vision of a farm with a merry old man, who swung her around – all of which Greenleaf saw as if he were her experiencing it. I did not see her, could not tell what was happening, but I feared for Legolas, and tried to pull him back. When we fell in my efforts to force Greenleaf to flee, she disappeared yet again.”

Aragorn omitted a key piece of the story, for which Legolas was grateful. Estel could have told the twins, Kalin, and his fellow humans of how the Prince had reached for Elise to pick her up and comfort her. He did not need for his friends to tell him how foolish it had been; however, now that he saw the possibility of Elise’s wraith being somehow related to wights, Legolas realized that his reaching out for the girl’s specter might have been somewhat out of his control, since wights were able to twist the will of others to their own will.

Speaking quickly to try to end their conversation so they could move on to action, Aragorn conveyed, “Legolas and I wrapped her body in a blanket. Greenleaf carried her along with us so that we could take her to her people. While resting at the fork in the creek, I realized I was shivering with the cold, though I had little reason to be so chilled. Thinking I was merely becoming sick, I did not bother Greenleaf with the knowledge of it. In the morning, we went to the nearest farmhouse, which turned out to be the very farm she had shown Legolas in her vision. As you heard us tell Wendt, it was the farm belonging to Elise’s family, and her mother, father, grandfather, and brother were all dead. We left Elise there in the house and made our way along the road towards the village, which is when we encountered Jakob and learnt that Halbarad had sent word to Imladris seeking Ada’s aid. It was during our walk here that I became certain I had been touched.”

Again, the twins looked between them, sharing more in his brief glance than could any other two people whom Legolas had ever met. Aloud, Elladan asked, “What does that mean? What made you certain?”

“I could feel a strange numbness upon my lower back, which began as distinct spots and melded into a swath as the numbness spread. I could not stop shivering. On inspection, we found no physical marks upon my skin – just like the villagers who have died. Greenleaf’s intuition about Elise sucking the very life from the world around her seems to have been a good one,” Estel admired, the praise itself strange, given the content of it.

For a third time in the last few minutes, the twins looked to each other, with only the slightest raise of Elrohir’s eyebrow giving away how the intentionally, temporarily dispassionate Noldor felt about Aragorn’s news. Legolas could see the looming lecture upon the twins’ identical faces. Being that their much-loved human sibling had just confessed to having been touched by a haunt that had killed over eighty villagers, Elladan and Elrohir were understandably frightened on Estel’s behalf.

Having resumed his pacing when Aragorn was talking, Jakob now stopped again and came to stand between Liandra and Halbarad. The Prince wasn’t sure if the twins knew Jakob, but the young Ranger had no trouble inserting himself into the family’s affairs or offering his side of the tale despite not having been asked for it by the clearly incensed Noldor. “When Aragorn and Legolas told Halbarad all this upon reaching the village, it gave us the idea of how to ascertain whether Elise was the cause of the trouble here in the village. Being that Legolas is the only one we know of who can see the girl, the Prince and I walked the village last night to look for her presence, carrying torches and lanterns in hopes that they would work to scare her off, or rid ourselves of her. But before we had completed our round, we heard screaming. So we took off to find out who was in trouble.”

Legolas was distressed to find Kalin’s anxiety increasing exponentially. The typically fair Silvan’s face was pale except for blotches of rosy pink upon his predominant, high cheekbones and his ears, while a similar flush was slowly spreading up his neck. _Kalin is not pleased to hear I went out hunting haunts, it seems,_ the Prince thought of his sentry, who currently shared a glare between Jakob and Estel. Kalin was holding the two younger Rangers at fault for putting Legolas in danger, albeit unfairly. The sentry wrung his hands together in front of him as he fretted over his charge, who at once turned his gaze away when the elder Silvan returned it. There had been no anger for Legolas in that restless look – only abject dread and trepidation.

“At the orchard not far from here, a woman stood in the main room of her house with her two kids beside her, staring at the open back door, shrieking her head off. Her husband was on the ground outside, his dog standing beside him and barking at nothing – or nothing that I could see, anyway.” Jakob stopped for a second to look at Legolas and Estel with apology. What the Ranger would say next would likely paint the Prince as the madman Jakob had claimed him to be the night previous. The Elf did not know of how Aragorn and Jakob had argued earlier when the younger Ranger claimed to his Chieftain that the Prince was mad for acting as he had, but Jakob now did not wish to offend his Chieftain again, or the Elf sitting in a diffident, disinterested daze beside him. “I was trying to get the woman to quiet, to find out what had happened, when next I knew, Legolas was outside by the dead man. Elise showed up with the ghost of the newly murdered man standing beside her – or so Legolas told me. I didn’t see either. She was reaching out for him, he said, so I lit my torch and tried to scare her off. Worked on the man, made him disappear like smoke in the wind, Legolas said, but she remained. Undaunted, the Prince sought information to be of aid to Aragorn, to the village, all of which I only truly learnt of later.”

“The newly dead man? You mean she touched and killed the orchard keeper and his faer lingered behind, just as her faer has?” the elder Noldo asked Legolas incredulously.

The Wood-Elf merely nodded for now while hoping Jakob would continue; however, Jakob remained silent and all eyes were upon the Prince. He turned his face away from his kith and the Edain. Elladan and Elrohir were looking at him as if he had lost his mind, although Legolas could tell they did not doubt his ability to see this specter; Kalin watched his Prince hawkishly, his grim countenance set in hard determination to protect his charge at all costs, despite there being no current danger. They knew why Legolas had placed himself in the danger of being close to Elise, for they knew the Prince would do whatever was necessary to save Estel’s life.

Understanding that they required more from him than a simple nod, Legolas raised up from his comforting recline against Estel, try though the Ranger did to keep the Silvan leaning against him. As exhausted as he was, Legolas did his best to speak with authority and conciliation so he might appease his sentry and friends. “I spoke to her. I told her she was hurting the people of this village and needed to stop. I promised to help her, told her friends were coming, and they would help me to help her. She showed me another vision. I saw her at the lake, where Estel and I stayed. She watched us fish, wishing she could join us. I understood then why she has been taking these villagers’ lives. She is a lonely, frightened child. I don’t believe she is necessarily evil, except in that she is selfish in the way children often are, and her fright and solitude have caused her to seek comfort however she can obtain it.”

Liandra made a disgusted noise low in her throat, just as she had the night previous upon hearing the reason behind Elise’s actions. Even more so now than before, the twins and sentry looked at the Prince with worried fear, their disbelief that Legolas would act so rashly, coupled with his defending Elise by giving reason for her unjustifiable actions, inciting them to wonder about Legolas’ state of mind.

“How would killing people comfort her?” his sentry asked with as much abhorrence as Liandra was showing. “I do not understand.”

Elladan and Elrohir understood, however, and answered for Legolas. The younger began, “Those whom she kills linger behind, giving her company, someone who can _see_ her, who knows she exists.” The elder added, “Well, besides Greenleaf, I suppose.”

With that, they sat in silence, allowing Elladan, Elrohir, and Kalin to take in all this information. Everyone here now knew the basic details of what had transpired to lead them to this point, which meant that everyone had the necessary information to confer knowledgeably about what to do. For Legolas, this conversation was another milestone. Once they had a plan of action, should they think of one at all, then the Prince could try to see that goal accomplished, as well. Until then, he would merely try to survive long enough to keep Estel alive. Even now, he found his eyelids sliding shut yet again. So tired was he, Legolas unselfconsciously sat back in his chair, resumed leaning against Estel, and rested his head upon the man’s shoulder. Yet, with a start, he suddenly realized Jakob had not mentioned Legolas being touched by Elise. He imagined it would not take long for the twins and Kalin to figure this out, but until then, he decided, _There is no use in offering the information. It will keep me from being the focus of their worry for a while. Let them worry over Estel, instead._

No sooner had he thought this than Kalin scooted forward in his chair until he could peer into his charge’s face, just as he had earlier done. “And you, Legolas? This haunt touched you, as well, didn’t she? While you were speaking to her to try to save Estel and this village?” the sentry asked his Prince, not bothering to hide the accusation behind his words. “Estel said you both suffered from the same.”

This ended the twins’ silent cogitations. They had not forgotten Legolas’ odd condition but had been distracted by other concerns; now, they were focused upon the Silvan once more. All around the schoolroom, everyone but Elladan jumped with startlement when Elrohir banged his fist against the tabletop to exclaim, “Damn you, Greenleaf! And you, as well, Estel.”

“Can neither of you avoid the precipice of death for more than a couple of months at a time?” Elladan inveighed in aggravation equal to his twin.

“We did not ask for this, brothers,” Estel argued back. His disagreement was weak, however, since while he may have been touched by accident, it seemed to Elladan, Elrohir, Kalin, and perhaps even Jakob, Halbarad, and Liandra that Legolas had been touched due to his own recklessness in desiring to save Estel. Numb and exhausted, Legolas could not muster the energy to be affected by his friends’ anger, which was hiding their fear for the Adan and Silvan whom they loved as brothers. Instead, he let Aragorn do the talking, which the man did again to tell his twin siblings, “If anything, it is poor luck on our part. Or as Jakob told me, providence.”

Neither of the twins would let this slide and both were set to have an argument about what they thought on the topic of divine plan threatening the life of the man and Silvan whom they loved as brothers. Luckily, a knock upon the door, followed by Tomas entering the schoolhouse, disrupted Elladan and Elrohir. The grim man asked of Halbarad, “Can you come speak to the villagers? I don’t know what you want said to them, and they assume because Lords Elladan and Elrohir are here that we’ve news. They want to know what will happen now and their restlessness will turn to violence soon, I fear.”

With a sigh, Halbarad stood and nodded. He motioned silently with one hand to Jakob, who took the hint to leave, as well, to give the Elves and the Chieftain time to speak alone, since it appeared a family quarrel was about to ensue. To both get Liandra out the door and mollify the villagers, Halbarad asked of the elder woman, “Can you please join me? It is best we appear as a united force.”

Liandra glanced around the room, giving each of the Elves a strange glare, until she clucked in sympathy at Legolas. Finally, she stood and went to the door with Halbarad and Jakob. They left without further comment.

His hands flitting around his Prince in eagerness to be of help but ignorant of how to do so, Kalin could take it no longer. He slid off his chair and once again knelt on the floor beside his Prince. A hand on each of Legolas’ knees, the sentry inquired, “Tell me what to do. What can I do?”

_That is a fine question,_ he remarked to himself, while wishing he had the answer, for then, all their problems would be solved. When he could not bear to look at Kalin’s eagerly fervent supplication, Legolas bowed his head and closed his eyes. Through his hand upon Estel’s leg, Legolas sensed how Aragorn’s faer was no long as vibrant as before, and he thought, _Just a little more then. Just a little more to give him more time._ As he had been doing all through the night and the morning in intermittent intervals, Legolas focused upon transferring the very life from his faer to the Ranger sitting beside him.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm at a point in the story where I am dithering about how to continue. I knew how I wanted it to end when I started because I had planned for the story to be part of another arc. Now, I'm thinking it is best to end the story, and thus the series, sooner rather than later. So, while I am dithering, this might be the last chapter for a while. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy.

The twins were beyond mere worry – he could see it in their faces. While their bodies, hair, and features were identical, the twins rarely dressed the same, lest they were trying to trick those around them into believing one was the other. This rarely worked anymore amongst those in the valley, for after the many years of knowing the Noldorin brothers, the Imladrians were well acquainted with their twin Lords’ dissimilar demeanors. Thus, even now, Estel knew his brothers were both incensed and petrified, but perceived it in different ways. Elladan, who was typically less emotional and more reserved than was his twin, gave away his fearful anger by the tight set of his mouth and a narrow furrow between his dark brows. They were small signs, yes, and ones that few would know the meaning behind, but they were telling signs for Aragorn. Elrohir, on the other hand, who was typically more emotional and more outgoing, showed his anxious ire in more obvious ways, as he stood from his seat and began to pace behind his elder brother, his hand rubbing at his worry-lined forehead as he contemplated what they should now do to save the lives of the Adan and Wood-Elf.

Kalin still knelt before his silent Prince, his hands still upon Legolas’ knees, while he gazed fervently up at the younger Silvan. The sentry seemed to be inspecting his charge, looking for injury though there was none to be found, of course, since the damage was deeper than physical harm.

“I don’t understand,” Elladan finally spoke, saying this with reluctance, for neither Elladan nor Elrohir were wont to admit that they did not comprehend something – much like their father. “If Jakob’s theory is right, and I suppose it is the most likely one we have right now, then why are you feeling better today, while Greenleaf looks like he will keel over at any given moment?”

With Elladan’s portentous question, Kalin glanced fearfully towards Elladan, then to Estel, and then back to Legolas. Reflexively, the sentry walked forward slightly upon his knees to get nearer to his ailing Prince, such that he had nearly pushed himself between the younger Wood-Elf’s thighs. _Keel over? Elladan ought just to say that from the look of him, it is possible Greenleaf will die at any moment,_ the Ranger complained to himself, but then realized why Elladan had been so vague in his observation, for he had been trying to spare the rest of them the harsh reality of the situation; and yet, from the increased worry upon Kalin and Elrohir’s faces, and the mounting, anxious beating of Aragorn’s fretful heart as his own complaint reaffirmed what he already knew of Legolas’ reduced state, he thought that no polite insinuation such as that would work. They all knew that either Silvan Prince or Adan Ranger might perish without a moment’s notice.

Elrohir turned on heel and paced back the length of the table, away from the end where Aragorn, Legolas, and Kalin were, to agree with his twin, “Exactly. If Elven blood – or heritage, as in your case, Estel – is the cause for the both of you having lived beyond the length of time that the Edain here in the village survived, then by all reasoning and taking into account how poorly Greenleaf fares, you should be dead, brother.” Ceasing his pacing when he was behind Elladan, Elrohir placed a hand upon his twin’s shoulder. The younger could feel the elder’s disquiet and wished to appease it as much as he desired the comfort for himself. “It makes no sense.”

The Ranger could only shake his head. He had no answers for them. All of what they thought they knew of Elise and her fondness for murder were conclusions drawn based upon what Legolas had seen from Elise. Elrohir began his pacing again when no answers were forthcoming from either Ranger or Prince, Elladan remained stoic and still, and Kalin kept up his perusal of Legolas. Estel laced his fingers with his lover’s digits, which felt cool and stiff in comparison to his own. The repeated mention of the worsening condition of the laegel once more harrowed the man with how he might soon lose his Greenleaf, and he held on to Legolas more forcefully, as if by this very hold he might keep the Elf with him. Perhaps Kalin felt the same, for his knuckles were white and his fingers looked bloodless, so securely did he have hold of the trousers’ cloth over Legolas’ knees.

_I wish Kalin would leave him alone,_ the Adan worried, thinking that he might just tell the sentry to back away and leave Legolas be, lest he upset his already beset Prince. As he watched and considered doing so, Kalin bent his head lower and closer to Legolas to try to look into his Prince’s face, but Legolas would not meet his sentry’s eyes. It was worrisome and unusual for the Wood-Elf to act this way – that is, by appearing to Estel as if Legolas were keeping secrets.

Again, Kalin must have felt just the same as Estel in thinking that Legolas was hiding something from them, for he soon began to ask, “My Prince? I can feel… You aren’t…”

When Elladan, Elrohir, and Estel all paid him attention at the start of the sentry’s locution, Kalin stopped from asking it. Whatever the sentry had meant to inquire, Estel could see the suspicion in Kalin’s face, which made Aragorn once again wonder what Legolas could possibly have done to cause the human to feel so much better while the Silvan grew worse faster than had Aragorn declined previous to this morning. Having no answer for this, however, Estel instead turned his mind to how to prolong his and Legolas’ life for now, if not end the curse forever, so that they could seek to end Elise. It seemed a fruitless task.

Suddenly, before Aragorn could even begin to suss out their next move, Kalin shocked the Ranger when he grabbed for Estel and Legolas’ entwined limbs. With a forceful and painful jerk, the Elf used one hand to yank Aragorn’s forearm away while using his other hand to untangle the two lovers’ fingers. At once, a confused Aragorn reached out to take hold of Legolas’ arm or hand or leg – just to remain in contact with his ailing lover – but seeing this, in a mildly painful manner, Kalin smacked Aragorn’s limb away before the man could touch the younger Wood-Elf. The sentry demanded loudly in inexplicable resentment for Estel, “Enough! Do not touch him!”

“Kalin, what’s got into you?” the younger twin asked with umbrage to see his human sibling treated so coarsely, and paced closer to where Estel and Legolas sat to stop the sentry should he next do something that might truly hurt the Adan, while Elladan stood from his seat for much the same reason. In his surprise, Aragorn only sat as he was, his eyes wide and watchful of Kalin’s protective antagonism.

“Why, Legolas? There must be some other way. I will not let you do this any longer!” the elder Wood-Elf exclaimed in a rush, while ignoring Elrohir’s query. Kalin stood from his crouch, grabbed his Prince’s chair by the slats upon which Legolas sat, and lifted it crudely, nearly toppling the chair and the laegel upon it as he hauled Legolas away from the Ranger. Only because Elrohir had come to stand near them did the elder Silvan not knock the younger one from his seat and to the ground, for Elrohir managed to steady the Prince’s chair ere it could topple to its side with the laegel to follow. Moving swiftly so he was between Aragorn and Legolas, Kalin knelt down before his fellow Silvan again, took hold of his beloved Prince’s forearms, and then nearly wailed in agony, “Why? Why would you do it?”

The twins and Ranger all looked to each other in utter bewilderment. None of them doubted the genuineness of Kalin’s worry, however, even though they did not yet know what caused it. Indeed, Aragorn felt his heart skip a beat. Estel was suddenly sure he would learn the answer to why Legolas seemed so much worse off than was he.

Legolas had remained quiet through all this, but at last, he looked up to his sentry, gave Kalin a tired, sad, and very brief smile, before he explained in a garbled murmur, “Because I love him.”

Gasping softly one right after the other, Elladan and Elrohir precipitously grasped Kalin’s meaning, while the Ranger remained silently clueless. Together, the two Noldor also came to stand between their human brother and Silvan brother, barring Aragorn from even seeing Legolas, much less getting near him. Elladan whispered in dazed awe, “No, Greenleaf. You haven’t.”

“I did not think it possible,” Elrohir added with similar shock. As was Kalin, the younger Noldo knelt down beside Legolas and reached up to turn the Silvan’s face towards him by a gentle hold of the Prince’s chin. “He is Man-kind; you are Elf-kind. It should not be possible.”

_What nonsense is this?_ the human asked himself. Determined to find out, but even more determined to be near Legolas again, to touch him, to comfort him, to remain beside the Elf for every single one of what might be their last moments, Aragorn stood and strode the few steps to where Kalin had moved the Prince’s chair. _What do they think he has done?_

Seeing his human brother’s intent, Elladan held his hand out and pushed against Aragorn’s chest, halting the Adan with this none too gentle action. “No, Estel. Do not touch him,” his brother whispered in blatant, confused bitterness. More loudly and with more anger, Elladan reiterated to the Ranger who tried to evade his brother’s impediment, “Do not touch him.”

To Estel in that moment, he thought only of reaching the Wood-Elf whom he loved above all others. Legolas’ pale face now looked much like how Elise’s skin had looked when they found her body at the creek – that is, ashen, waxy, and lifeless. With his shoulders slumped and his whole form tilting forward, Legolas appeared to be on the verge of tumbling over, and despite that both Kalin and Elrohir were crouching around the Prince and could catch Legolas should this happen, Estel wanted nothing more than to be there to do it, to succor his lover however he might. Aragorn had endured enough of this. He would not be denied being near Legolas for any reason and told them so, bellowing in wrath and causing all four Elves to jump slightly at his aggrieved and kingly tone, “What is the matter with you? Let me by. Let me get to Greenleaf!”

“Stay back,” Elrohir hissed at the human without even looking at him. The Woodland Prince’s eyes were now closed, his arms hung lax, and his breathing was growing shallow – he looked to be falling asleep where he sat, but the Ranger feared it might be death into which his lover fell. The twin asked of his human brother, “Please. Just stay back.”

But Aragorn could not abide this order. All the human knew was that Legolas was suffering or dying and they would not let him near. Grabbing hold of Elladan’s arm, he shoved it away from where it was pressed against his torso, but Elladan rapidly lifted it again and seized hold of the cloth of the Ranger’s tunic, right in the middle of his chest, to keep Aragorn from getting around him and to Legolas. He wrenched the elder twin’s forearm to try to bully his way past his brother, though to no avail.

“You will release me and let me pass,” he tried to caution Elladan. He would fight his way through the other Elves to get to Legolas if he had to, except that he did not wish to hurt anyone.

Kalin was now saying Legolas’ name in an attempt to rouse the somnolent younger Elf. Were he not so irate and focused upon Elladan’s staying hand, the Ranger might have noticed the despair and desolation with which Kalin called to his beloved Prince, who was not asleep and not unconscious, but exhausted to the point of collapse. Legolas lifted one arm with what must have taken him great effort, settled his forearm upon one of Kalin’s shoulders, and then lowered his head until it hovered a finger’s breadth away from his sentry’s other shoulder. In response to his Prince’s seeming inability to stay upright, Kalin came off his knees so that Legolas’ head hit the sentry’s shoulder, where it remained, while he took hold of the younger Elda’s torso, just above his waist. When Legolas rested his head in the crook of Kalin’s neck, his face turned in towards his sentry’s throat in a way too familiar for Aragorn to be pleased by, the disagreeable and unwelcome, worming jealousy he felt to see this made Estel renew his effort to be rid of Elladan’s grip upon his shirt.

“Estel,” Elladan murmured, looking first to his twin and then Legolas, ere he returned his verdigris eyes to the human. “Estel,” he repeated, the words seemingly sticking in his throat as he tried to explain, his sympathy for the Adan clear in both his cracking, low voice and the somber set of his features. By his hold of Aragorn’s tunic, he shook the Ranger a bit to obtain Estel’s full attention, and when he had it, he explained, “Muindor, Greenleaf is killing himself to try to save you.”

All Estel’s anger left him. He dropped his hands from Elladan’s forearm, stumbled back a step out of Elladan’s hold, and sat harshly upon the chair he had only recently vacated. _Killing himself? What does that mean?_ As he watched, useless and helpless, Kalin pulled Legolas to him in a carefully measured fall, such that the younger Silvan sank further into the elder Silvan’s body. The sentry wrapped his arms about his Prince’s upper torso to keep him upright. To Estel’s wonder, Kalin was weeping, but then, the Ranger noted how Elrohir sniffled every now and then, and though he could not see the younger Noldo’s face from this angle, he thought Elrohir might be weeping as well. Elladan’s eyes were moist with tears, but they had not yet fallen, for the elder Noldo kept better control of his emotions than did his younger brother.

“Is there someplace soft to lay him?” the sentry asked, and asked again ere giving Aragorn the chance to respond, “Please, Estel. Is there somewhere we can lay him?”

“The bags of wheat flour over in the corner will suffice,” Elrohir suggested, his own hands upon the laegel to ensure that should Kalin’s hold falter, Legolas would not slither to the floor.

So softly that he could barely be heard over the Eldar speaking around him, Legolas muttered with no conviction and with no one believing him, “I am fine. I need only to rest a moment. Leave me be.”

“You are not fine,” the Prince’s sentry argued back with harsh and virulent anger for his charge. Contradicting his infuriated tone, Kalin affectionately rested his forehead upon the top of the younger Silvan’s similarly fair head to chastise, “You are a fool, Legolas. And you are _not fine_.”

Estel had never heard Kalin speak to his Prince in such a way; in fact, hearing it broke his baffled silence. “There is a small room behind that blanket hanging from the ceiling over there,” the benumbed and muddled Ranger told his brothers and the sentry, pointing to where the opening to the ensconcement was situated. “In the room there is a small cot with blankets. It is where we slept last night.”

With Elrohir’s assistance, Kalin slid one arm under Legolas’ knees and another behind his back, and then lifted his Prince easily to his chest to carry him. Seeing Kalin do this, Estel felt the familiar pang of jealousy writhe its way through his heart. He ought to be the one caring for Legolas, not Kalin, and though he did not fault Kalin for performing this task, it burned him greatly not to be able to do it, especially since he had yet to understand why the Elves around him were intent on his not even touching the laegel. The whole time they had sat here, questioning Wendt, sharing their stories with the twins and Kalin, and discussing the matter, Legolas had been eager to keep the Ranger’s hand in his own, mostly upon his bare belly. And this whole time, Aragorn had felt better and better, while Legolas had grown steadily worse. Somehow, the twins and sentry had come to the conclusion that Aragorn had done something to cause the young Silvan’s decline, as if he would ever willingly allow or cause Legolas to suffer while there was enough life in his body to be able to stop it.

With Legolas held devotedly in Kalin’s arms, the sentry walked to the opening of the ensconcement; Elrohir quickly strode ahead to move the makeshift curtain from the way for Kalin to pass through before he followed behind the two Wood-Elves, with Elladan and then Aragorn walking in thereafter.

“I would not have thought it possible.” Elrohir once again moved to be in front of Kalin so he could arrange the small bed before the sentry laid his Prince down upon it. Sweeping back the blankets, the younger Noldo added, “Estel is mortal. How can it be so?”

“I do not understand it either, but he has done it, and it has worked, apparently.” Elladan stopped at the head of the bed and watched with Estel while Kalin settled his Prince down upon the thin mattress as gently as he could with Elrohir’s help in seeing Legolas situated upon it. Since the young Silvan still trembled as if cold, Elrohir aided Kalin in spreading the blankets over Legolas, who did not struggle against any of this by actions or words.

“If one of you do not explain to me what is happening…” he began to threaten, but stopped when Elladan turned away from Legolas and the others to face him. Now, tears trailed down the elder Noldo’s face, which ended Estel’s empty threat. “Elladan,” he spoke, “tell me what is going on. What have I done? Why do you say he is killing himself to save me? What do you mean?”

“You have done nothing, my brother. It is not your doing,” Elladan assured the Ranger. Kalin sat on the edge of the bed, Elrohir sat at its end by Legolas’ blanketed feet, and Elladan moved to grab the only chair in the room. He picked it up and placed it against the wall, tugged at Estel’s arm to incite him into sitting in it, and then sat upon the desk beside him, though at a higher level. From here, Aragorn could see his lover, at least, even if he was not allowed to be near him. Wiping at his tear trailed face, Elladan laid a hand upon Aragorn’s shoulder and squeezed the tensed muscles there. “Greenleaf has been bequeathing to you the light of his faer. He has intentionally dimmed his own soul to keep your soul burning brightly, to keep you alive when likely you would already have died from the haunt’s touch. He brings about his own death, or hastens it, if nothing else, so that you might live.”

_It cannot be._

His jaw fell open, his breathing hitched, and sickness rose in his belly. He could deny it all he wished, and wish he did that he could, but once Elladan spoke his explanation, Aragorn knew it to be true. Elladan adjusted the lamp on the table so that it burnt more brightly, such that the dim and windowless room was now cast in the lamp’s eerie amber glow. When his breakfast felt sure to moil up and out of his belly, Aragorn held a hand over his mouth. Being that the elder twin was watching Estel’s reaction to this news, he saw as the human paled with nauseous shock, and so asked, “Estel? Are you well?”

“Of course he’s well, thanks to his siphoning the very life from my Prince,” Kalin answered uncharitably on Aragorn’s behalf. Not hiding his irritation for the Ranger, Kalin straightened the blankets over his Prince and then straightened his shoulders to face Estel while he accused, “Why do you look so surprised? I find it hard to believe you did not know.”

“Come now, Kalin. None of us thought it possible. Why would Estel even consider it?” the younger twin said in an attempt to diffuse the sentry’s anger. Elrohir laid his hand upon Legolas’ covered legs, which he fondly rubbed as one might do to allay a chill in one’s flesh. “I have known of such things happening between bonded Elven mates. Even our Ada did something similar for our Naneth when after he healed her body her faer still faltered.”

“But we have no personal knowledge of this happening between an Elf and an Adan. Although, to be fair, such bonds are rare enough as it is,” Elladan finished his twin’s logic.

Kalin’s anger was not sated and though he did not wish to waste his time upon Estel when his Prince lay dying before him, the sentry could not stop himself from accusing, “I felt it the moment I saw him. I felt it the whole time we spoke in the other room. I knew his faer was declining. You are his lover and did not know?”

“If I had known what he was doing, I would have put an end to it,” he replied honestly, while not rising to the challenge by returning Kalin’s anger. He did not want to argue and even the Silvan sentry could not contend against Estel’s claim, for despite his accusation, Kalin knew well that Aragorn would not have allowed it to happen, and so the elder Wood-Elf only turned away, back to his charge. Aragorn moved to sit upon the very edge of the chair, wishing he could rise, push Kalin from the way, and take the sentry’s seat. He wished also that he could touch Legolas as Kalin now did, for the elder Wood-Elf had taken to stroking the hair from Legolas’ face and various other, small actions of comfort. “Is it true, Greenleaf?” the beleaguered human asked his Elven lover. “Is what they say true?”

On the Ranger’s behalf, Legolas murmured not in answer to Aragorn’s question but Kalin’s allegation, telling his sentry, “Leave Estel be, Kalin. I did what I needed to so Estel may live. Do not hold him at fault for it.”

This outright admission broke the man’s control and he found stinging, hot tears forming in his eyes. Above all else, he wanted to be close to Legolas. This need overrode the threat of Elladan’s staying hand, and he stood and tried to push past the elder twin. “You cannot touch him again, brother,” Elladan reminded him, hopping up to stop Aragorn by blocking his access to Legolas. “Greenleaf has likely granted you more time than he now has left. Whereas before you were likely to die before him, I think he has guaranteed you would live past his demise. A single moment more of sharing his faer’s light with you, and Greenleaf may die.”

And the Wood-Elf did so to ensure Aragorn would have the chance to be saved, the Adan knew. He also knew that it was not him whom his brothers and the sentry did not trust; no, it was Legolas who could not be trusted. The Elf had already given of himself so greatly that it evinced to those around him how Legolas was willing to offer to Estel the extant light of his faer unto its permanent darkness, all to save Estel. If Aragorn so much as trailed his fingers over the Elf’s face and by this touch Legolas purposely imparted upon the man what vitality he might in so brief a touch, the last flickering remnant of the Prince’s faer would be lost. He stood there face to face with Elladan, wishing there was a way to persuade his brother to let him by, but Aragorn would no more chance Legolas’ life than would the twins or sentry. With a nod, Estel took a couple of steps backwards until the back of his legs hit the chair’s seat, which he then fell heavily into sitting upon, his rhaw and faer filled with boundless energy and brightness, but his mind shadowed with the anticipation of his lover’s death.

_I am a fool. I should have known Greenleaf would do something rash to save me._ In the woods around Lake-town, Legolas had offered up his body for torment and allowed his soul to be rent like his flesh, all to save Aragorn’s life. He had endured his father’s beatings and hatred to keep Estel safe and without worry, and with him. Under Mithfindl’s hateful advances, when thinking it to be Aragorn, Legolas had allowed himself to be tortured because he had not wanted to hurt Estel. When as a child Estel had been drowning in the Bruinen, Legolas had leapt in to save the young Adan without second thought, placing his life in danger for the life of a young boy he had only that day met. _Always he has put my welfare above his own,_ Aragorn condemned, his heart beginning to race with the helpless anxiety he felt, _as he does for all those whom he loves._

The fading Silvan Prince upon the bed renewed their purpose. They had been pressed for time before, but now they had not a second to waste. This realization struck them all nearly simultaneously; except for the meek Prince, everyone else fidgeted in restlessness and looked to each other in hopes that one of them might have some idea. Although Chieftain of the Rangers, amidst these Eldar, Aragorn felt to be inexperienced and daft, while Kalin was too preoccupied with Legolas’ welfare to concentrate. Elrohir looked to his elder twin, as did he usually, to provide insight.

“Think,” Elladan ordered of those around him, the task of leading them having fallen to him. The elder twin took to stroking his chin in unknowing imitation of their father, who did the same while contemplating some matter he found hard to decipher. “We must find some course of action. We must figure out how best to proceed.”

“We will not be able to save him,” the sentry abhorred, for he could feel his Prince’s diminishing more keenly than could the two Noldor. His words less like a question and more like a statement he wished to be convinced was false, Kalin looked at the three brothers around him to ask, “Will we? No matter what we do, Legolas will still die?”

“Kalin,” the younger Wood-Elf whispered. Everyone stopped their restive motions and even halted their breathing to hear what Legolas might say, since his voice was barely audible. “You can still save Estel. Do not make my gift to him go to waste.”

Kalin took hold of his Prince’s shoulders and shook the laegel roughly with each word he spoke, whispering, “Eru damn you, Legolas.” Seeing this, Estel stood from his chair to put an end to it, being that he did not like how Kalin was speaking or treating Legolas, but Elladan thrust his arm out to stop the Ranger from getting past and in the end, Elrohir halted Kalin by laying a hand upon the sentry’s back. Kalin had already stopped his rough shaking of his Prince but did not let go of his shoulders, which he held to in an agonizing grip while he warned the younger Elf, “If you think I am taking word back to your father of your death, you are mistaken.”

In some way, this caused Legolas’ stoicism to crumple briefly, and his face became pained and drawn. “Kalin, please. I have things I need to tell you. Things I need for you to tell my father –”

“No. I am not listening to this.” Kalin released his charge and sat back. He pointed a finger at Legolas – an act that would have cost him that finger should Ninan or the King have been around to see it – and cautioned him, “You will live to tell him yourself or whatever it is you wish to say will never be heard. I will not do it. I will not listen to your deathbed confession because you are not dying.”

It seemed that the Woodland Prince had wanted to give Kalin a message for their King, and it appeared to Estel to be breaking his lover’s heart that Kalin refused to listen to it. While he knew why Kalin did so, it broke his own heart to see Legolas upset. Unable to touch the Elf and with Elladan at the ready to keep him from getting any closer, Estel looked to Elladan and then Elrohir, hoping one of them would make Kalin see reason.

Whether by his pleading look or their own sorrow over Legolas’ state, Elrohir took hold of the younger Elf’s leg as if it were his arm and they about to make covenant, and promised Legolas, “We will listen to and take your message to Thranduil, Greenleaf. It is the least we can do, brother. But do not give in so easily. Let us put our minds first to how to aid you and Estel. Just rest for now.”

“Yes, brother,” the elder twin added, calling Legolas brother as had Elrohir, as they were wont to do. Elladan pushed lightly with his arm against Aragorn’s middle, such that the Ranger sat back down, while telling the laegel, “Rest. You’ve lived through worse than some haunt, haven’t you? Do not give up. Kalin is wrong. You are not on the brink of death, Greenleaf. You are merely winded, so to speak, from having given too much to Estel too quickly. With a little rest, you will feel better.”

Legolas turned his face away from them – or at least, he turned his face away from Kalin, who glared down at his Prince with atypical wrath. It occurred to Aragorn in that moment that Kalin was likely more upset with Legolas for having thrown away his immortal life, by Kalin’s thinking, to save the mortal Adan, than Kalin would be if Legolas were dying from injury. Kalin loved his Prince, yes, and Legolas loved his sentry just as much. When the Wood-Elf had trusted no one – not even his own people – while under Mithfindl’s control, he had retained his trust in Kalin. When the Prince had been injured in Mirkwood by his own hand, Kalin was the one to nurse him back to health, to help him bathe and dress, to ensure he ate. Kalin had been beside his Prince practically since the day of Legolas’ birth. He had stood beside Legolas in his hunt for Mithfindl when no one else believed the Silvan Prince capable of fending for himself. He had helped Legolas to tend his wounds over the millennia when Thranduil’s anger rent Thranduilion’s flesh or contused his skin. While Elladan and Elrohir were certainly as close as brothers were to Legolas, Kalin had become almost like a surrogate father at times, offering the unconditional love, support, and presence the younger Silvan lacked while in the Greenwood. To have Kalin angered with him – and likely for the first time, Aragorn supposed, since to his knowledge, Kalin had never taken his Prince to task before – pierced through Legolas’ strange insouciance to cut him deeply.

The three brothers watched Kalin draw in a beleaguered, deep breath. He reached out and with the backs of his fingers wiped at Legolas’ face, which is when Estel realized Legolas was weeping. Once again, Aragorn made to rise to soothe Legolas’ sorrow, but also to vent his fury for Kalin. It was the sentry who had brought the Prince to tears and if he had to, Estel would bash Kalin’s head against the wall to see he did not cause Legolas further distress. But once again, Elladan stopped the man, this time by holding the Adan down by his shoulder; however, by then, Aragorn saw Kalin’s regret, which dampened the rage swelling inside Estel, though it did not drown it.

“I am sorry, my Prince,” the sentry murmured in shame, his own weeping having restarted at seeing how aggrieved he had made his dying charge. “I am sorry.”

But Legolas did not turn his face back to them, though he did not move away from Kalin’s tentative, tender attempts to brush away his Prince’s tears, nor did he refute his sentry’s apology. Aragorn sat back down and put his head in his hands.

“I will not waste this gift, Greenleaf,” he told his Elven lover, his determination causing him to sound hard and cruel, though his words were anything but. “I did not want it, but I will not waste it, because I will use this time to save you. Come,” he said as Elladan had said moments before, “let us think.”

“Why can Legolas see Elise while no one else can? Would one of us be able to see her?” the sentry queried the other two Elves in the small room. The Silvan said this with ostensible hope, for if Kalin could see the girl’s haunt, he would put himself in harm’s way to find a means of saving his Prince. He then said as much, telling them, “If it is some friend she requires, I will offer myself in trade for Legolas and Estel, and all these villagers. We need to find her so I can try.”

Elladan and Elrohir looked to each other but said nothing aloud. He knew what his brothers were thinking – they thought that if it were actually possible to trade Kalin’s life for the lives of the villagers, for Estel, for Legolas, then they would not stop him. It was Kalin’s fervent and somewhat suicidal desire to die to keep his Prince alive and well, yes, but Kalin would die honorably and gladly. In fact, should such a thing be possible, Aragorn knew his twin brothers would make the same proposal as Kalin offered now, should there be a chance of saving all these Edain lives, and most especially the lives of the Ranger and Silvan whom they loved as brothers.

So rather than disregard Kalin’s suggestion to hand his life over in place of the others, Elladan instead focused upon the dilemma of seeing Elise. The elder twin pulled his legs up under him so that he sat cross-legged upon the desktop, his elbows resting upon his bent knees. “We won’t know until we have the chance to be near her, I suppose. Greenleaf will need to be present, so that if we are incapable of sensing or seeing her, we will know that she is there, and thus that we cannot see her.”

“If we can’t see her, and I think it likely we will not, why can Greenleaf see her? Why do none of the humans see her?” the younger twin asked his elder, who only frowned in answer, since he had no answer to give.

As much as he did not want to say it in front of Legolas, despite that the Wood-Elf seemed to be willfully incognizant of their conversation, Aragorn offered, “In the woods, when first Legolas explained to me of her, after I knew he was not hallucinating, I had thought Greenleaf might be able to see her beause she is a spirit lingering between corporealness and bodilessness, like an Elven faer fading from its rhaw. Over the last several months, Greenleaf has been caught between the same, hasn’t he, with his faer loosened from his rhaw as he battles his grief?”

His gaze had remained upon his Prince since after making his offer to die for his charge, but now, Kalin looked up sharply at Estel, his dislike of being reminded of the precariousness of his Prince’s well-being causing him to want to lash out at the bearer of the reminder. The Silvan’s mouth worked to say words that did not get past his lips, until eventually, he returned to comforting Legolas by threading his fingers through the younger Elf’s hair to untangle it and fixing the braids therein with repentant consideration. Finally, however, he agreed with Estel, saying, “If we cannot see Elise, then you are likely right. It is the least implausible thing I have heard today.”

Clearing his throat lightly, Elladan garnered all of their attention – save for Legolas – and spoke in a manner reminding Aragorn of Erestor, who often sounded like he was teaching even when he spoke of something as mundane as the weather. The elder twin lectured mildly, “Much of Ilúvatar’s design is hidden from us – and not just us, but from the Valar, as well – especially in concerns to the Edain. But the soul, the faer, is Eru’s Flame Imperishable housed in physical form. The faers of Elves differ from those of men, of course, though exactly how so cannot be known by us. If one considers a faer like a light, like a true piece of the Flame Imperishable, then an Elven faer is like an oil lamp whose oil may run low, causing it to dim after long years in Middle Earth or after hardship and sorrow, when it must burn brighter to survive dark times, but it can be replenished in Valinor. Even then, if an Elf is killed, though the light may seem to be snuffed out, it can be rehoused again if re-embodied by Námo. The light of an Elven faer is meant to burn longer; it is why the Eldar can live immortal lives,” Elladan told them.

Estel listened intently. He knew all this in a vague way from his lessons as a child in the valley, but hearing Elladan speak of it now brought this philosophy into practicality, and the metaphor was an apt one, in Aragorn’s thinking. Having a great love of lore and study, the elder twin was more knowledgeable of such theoretical topics than were the rest of them, while Elrohir, who loved warcraft and strategy more than his twin, was more knowledgeable in certain practical topics, such as crafting and healing. In this way, they were two halves of the same whole in that their father had mastery of both edification and craft, and each twin had taken after half of the vast understanding and mastery of their father. That wasn’t to say Elladan wasn’t adroit at crafting and healing or Elrohir wasn’t adroit at lore and study, just that each held one dearer to their interests than they did the other.

The elder twin again rubbed at his chin as he thought. So much like Elrond did Elladan look just then that Aragorn was strangely soothed by it, for in the deepest recesses of his being, where he felt but did not have conscious thought, his foster father’s presence was always a welcome balm, for Elrond was ever adept at setting wrong things aright. Aragorn allowed himself this small reprieve, this unbidden hope that somehow, Elladan would be the conduit through which the expertise of their father might flow.

Elladan continued, speaking as if thinking aloud, while his rapt audience listened, “An Adan soul is more like a candle. It may be snuffed out, though rarely is it lit again in our known world, though perhaps so beyond it. We cannot know,” he stressed, as he wanted for his brothers and the Silvan to understand he offered them information but no true answers. “Once an Adan life reaches its end, in our existence, at least, its flame gutters out for good.”

While not dimwitted, Kalin was hard-pressed to be reflective when his Prince’s life was doing as Elladan had suggested by dimming into darkness. Having taken Legolas’ lax hand in between both of his own, the sentry implored impatiently, “What does that mean? Are you saying Legolas has given so much of himself that he is certain to die? Or that his only hope is sailing to Valinor, where his faer might be replenished?”

Aragorn was quite sure that if Elladan claimed the latter was true, and only Valinor might save his Prince, then Kalin would make haste to Mithlond at once, board the next ship, and be on his way with Legolas.

“I am sorry, Kalin. I do not know. I only meant to explain that this chill from which Legolas suffers, that which Estel endured yesterday, is not physical. It is spiritual. It is the Flame Imperishable fleeing their physical bodies. What fuel for the fire within Legolas he held, he has given most of it to Estel.” Elladan shook his head at the sentry and looked to his twin and human brother with an unusual, spiritless expression. “And it seems Elise is in a similar state. Her light, her flame, her soul – whichever you’d like to call it – is bereft of its body. Why it lingers instead of having gone to the Halls of Awaiting, as do all Edain souls for some time after death – that is the important question. If we can answer it, then we will know how to send her on her way to Mandos, and thereby end her terrorization of the village.”

This was not what Kalin wanted to hear, of course, as it gave him no plan for saving his Prince. He pressed Legolas hand, still encased his own, to his chest. Had not faers needed to be bonded by mutual love, as were Estel and Legolas’ souls, then the Ranger might have thought Kalin was trying to do for Legolas as Legolas had done for Estel – that is, impart his very vitality into his Prince to save him. Knowing Kalin, he was likely trying regardless. The sentry wanted to know, “But will ending her end this affliction she has placed upon Legolas and Estel? Will it disappear along with her? Or will we be saving all these villagers by ridding ourselves of the only being who might be able to reverse this bane, thus dooming Legolas and Estel to their deaths?”

Again, Elladan shook his head. Perhaps it wasn’t fair of all of them to put this burden upon Elladan, since he knew little more than did they, but being the eldest of them, even if only by minutes over his twin, and being the most erudite about such topics, the burden fell to Elladan all the same.

Elrohir was doing as Kalin was doing in providing comfort to Legolas by affectionate touch. The younger Noldo had flung the blankets from the end of the bed so that he could reach Legolas’ lower legs, which he rubbed and massaged in companionable, fraternal fondness. He inserted his own question, refocusing the topic of their discussion by saying, “The man last night. The one who died and then was driven away by the torchlight. Why did it work on him but not on the girl?

They sat in silence, all of them waiting for Elladan to speak, which he did after a brief moment of motionless, soundless cogitations. “I would guess that she is the cause for his lingering at all. A faer, whether Elven or Adan or whatnot, does not normally exist in Arda in such a way – at least, not since Valinor and thus the Halls of Awaiting were moved beyond the Sphere of Arda, or unless it is cursed. If the very magic keeping her here is of the Dark, then it might explain why the man last night was driven away by Light. Her hold of him was not absolute, only temporary. But what is holding _her_ here is stronger, and thus not as easily broken.”

In the odd, orange lamplight, sitting in this musty, cramped room where only this morning he had woken after a pleasurable, restful night with Legolas to a morning of more pleasure and intimacy, Aragorn stood from his chair. At once, Elladan’s arm went out to halt the man from walking to the bed, but the Ranger did not approach his lover. Instead, he paced to the blanket-covered opening of the ensconcement, back to the chair, and then off to the opposite end again, while offering his own opinion. “It must be some object in that house or one that she took from it. If Emler found something cursed with some ancient spell, or if he brought back with him some object holding a remnant of the very curse that made the Barrow-wights as they are, then it could very well have affected her the same way. She is doing much as they do, is she not? She may not look or act exactly as one of them, but she is not truly an agent of the Dark, as are they, even if it is Dark magic cursing her. It is only happenstance that she is a lonely, frightened child, and thus seeks to kill her family, friends, and fellow villagers as a means to appease her loneliness. Had it been an adult, there might be a poor soul haunting the woods, but they might never have willingly caused a single death. She might withstand the light and not fade, as would a wight, because she is not of the Dark, just cursed by it. If it is not some object from Emler’s treasure, then I am at a loss as to what it could be,” he admitted, coming to a stop just at the head of the bed, where his lover’s fair head laid upon the pillow, his visage still turned towards the wall and not to his worried friends around him.

Estel’s impatient actions were contagious. Soon, Elladan was standing from his seat upon the desk. He straightened his clothes, adjusted his weapons, and pushed his hair back from off his shoulders – all just to move, to act, to do anything that might be construed as constructive rather than sitting still and enduring the idle argument they now held. “If she is pulling the Flame Imperishable from the very souls of these people, then perhaps she is using that flame, that light, to remain. Much like how Legolas bequeathed his light to Estel, except she takes from others rather than gives. We cannot keep her from killing, not since she is incapable of being hurt in conventional means, so we cannot hope to weaken her by disallowing her to draw more life to ensure the continuance of her existence in this state. The only option I see is to find the tether holding her faer here. We can give Greenleaf the chance to speak to her a final time, to see if she can reverse the curse she has cast, but if we wait too long, we risk losing the chance to end the curse by ending her, because you and Greenleaf will not have survived for it to matter. If she never shows or Greenleaf or you worsen to the point where taking the chance is the better choice, then we will sever the connection and hope it will end her bane upon you and Greenleaf,” Elladan told the Ranger.

Estel paused in his pacing to look in the returned gazes of Elladan, Elrohir, and then Kalin, to see that each held the same absolute resolve as did he. “Then we need to search the house and the creek near where we found her body,” the Ranger determined, his mind clearing of the detritus of Elladan’s explanation as his purpose was now fixed. “If she shows before Greenleaf…” he began but the words caught in his throat, feeling like he had just swallowed a nettle. Mentioning his lover’s death made it too real for Estel. He could not admit the possibility of it. “We will give Greenleaf the chance to speak to her, if possible, but regardless, she must be ended. I will burn that farm to the ground to see it so.”

He left unsaid what he had meant and knew that the others understood: if Legolas died ere he was given the chance to try to speak to Elise, to reverse the curse, then Aragorn wanted the Adan girl-child’s ghost to be eliminated regardless of what consequence it caused him. He would do what he could to save Legolas’ life, but if it could not be saved, he would die avenging his Greenleaf, even if it was against a troubled, lonely Adan girl.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I flat out feel guilty now if I don't update once a week. I stopped this chapter short right before the point where my indecisiveness needed to be resolved. In other words, I dither still about where I am going with this, but I have updated with a little something. I would say that the next chapter might take a while in coming while I dither, but I can't seem to take a break to end my vacillation with resolute action, so who knows. Not I! 
> 
> Enjoy.

Through all this conversation, the Woodland Prince laid quietly upon the cot, his face turned askance from them, but especially so from Kalin’s anger – an anger that Legolas had never before received from his faithful sentry, who had expressed his frustration and irritation before, yes, but never like this, mild though even this had been. As Estel had surmised earlier, having Kalin livid with him hurt the Prince more than could anyone else’s fury, for Legolas had never borne the brunt of his sentry’s ire before now. He felt similarly as he had when in the woods, when arguing with Aragorn after he had pulled the man from the Bruinen while Legolas hunted Mithfindl and Estel hunted Legolas. At that time, he had endured Aragorn’s irritation before but never quite the wrath the Adan had shown him for the Prince’s having fled the valley in search of Mithfindl. Legolas had thought then as he thought now – he would never again assume to have Estel’s unconditional love and acceptance as once he had, just as he would never again assume to have these from Kalin.

And it hurt.

His ever-devoted and always benevolent sentry’s anger hurt the Prince worse than any physical pain Legolas had ever underwent. Kalin had apologized to him, but it did not ameliorate the tiny crack now present in the once unbreakable bond between himself and Kalin.

 _Perhaps Kalin is right. I am a fool. But how could I not try to save Estel?_ he asked himself. _Any one of them – Elladan, Elrohir, and Estel, and most especially Kalin – would do the same for me._

Legolas was tired of sorrow and tears. He pressed his eyes firmly shut in the hopes of the burgeoning moisture gathering in his eyes dissipating before it evinced to the others the depths of his despair. He did not want their pity. He had done what he felt needed to be done. There was no living for him after Aragorn died, not now and not if by some chance their lives were saved and Estel managed to die of old age rather than injury or sickness; and so, he believed his gift to the man a frantic attempt to save them both, not suicidal ambition as his friends, sentry, and lover seemed to think. He needed Estel to live so that he might live, as well; yet, even should Legolas die as a result of his actions, he would die with the satisfaction of having prolonged his lover’s life, if not saved it. That the others did not understand his actions only aggrieved him, for while he had known they would be upset with him over his choices, the Silvan had also thought his friends would see the love and commitment upon which they were based, rather than judging him to be foolish, untrustworthy, and dangerous.

 _It is done regardless. There is no taking it back. But I would rather not die with them angered at me, if only because they will feel guilty for it once I am gone,_ he decided.

They did not speak to him, but with his eyes closed and breathing low, they probably thought Legolas asleep – or so he hoped. If they were taking to ignoring him because they thought him a helpless, childish idiot as they had done when his mind was under the foul, cloying web of poppy milk, the force of the periapt, and Mithfindl’s instruction, or when the scar had held its arrogative reign over him, then the Elf considered he might save them the trouble of trying to protect him by extinguishing his own damned faer before Elise’s curse was given the chance. He wouldn’t do such a thing right now, though, and for good reason. His mind was overtaken by a sinister cognizance. Over the last several weeks, the Wood-Elf had felt similarly every time Elise was near, although he had not known it was Elise until the past couple of days. The exhausted Prince didn’t care if doing so broke him completely – he was not allowing Estel, Kalin, Elrohir, or Elladan to go anywhere without him since he felt that he was likely the only one capable of seeing Elise. Also, the Silvan did not want to die here in this schoolhouse when he could be outside for it. If it meant his friends would need to tolerate his morbid company for a while longer, then so be it. He would do whatever it took to keep them and the villagers safe.

With great effort, the Wood-Elf opened his eyes and rolled his weary head back the other way. Kalin sat beside his Prince with Legolas’ hand held tight against the elder Silvan’s chest, while the sentry’s rapidly drumming heart played a fearful song under the laegel’s lax fingers. Kalin had not strayed from his Prince’s side the whole time since putting Legolas into the bed, but currently, the sentry was looking at Elladan or Estel, both of whom hovered at the head of the bed in their impatience to depart. Elrohir, however, noted Legolas’ movements and wakefulness, for he interrupted Elladan, Estel, and Kalin’s discussion of plans for their search when he ceased his absently affectionate massaging of the Wood-Elf’s legs and said, “Greenleaf, are you well? Are you in need of anything?”

Now, all of them stared at the laegel. Pulling his hand free from Kalin’s hold of it, Legolas labored to sit up, but was stopped summarily by his sentry’s grasp of his shoulders. Over the past several months, for Kalin the line between his being Legolas’ friend and being his Prince’s sentry had blurred, such that one moment Kalin would be agreeable to his Prince’s demands and dutiful in seeing them carried out, while the next he would be argumentative when he deemed it needed and disobedient of what was asked of him. At present, Legolas needed for Kalin to be his sentry, not his friend. He did not have the energy and they did not have the time for debate.

“Take your hands off me,” he growled at Kalin in a voice low and authoritative, speaking to his sentry in a way that he seldom had need to do – that is, with the princely expectation of his command being followed. Legolas would not be impeded. “Now.”

To his relief, Kalin did as asked and removed his impedimental grasp of Legolas’ shoulders, though not without quarrelling, “You need rest, my Prince, please. Just rest for a while.”

Still, rather than obstruct him for a second time, Kalin aided Legolas into sitting when his Prince struggled again to sit upright. Settling his back against the plank wall by which the small bed sat flush, the younger Wood-Elf did not mince words. “I am riding out to the farm with you.” Legolas took a deep breath and regretted it immediately when the numbed tightness around his chest nauseated him. The room spun for a moment and only through sheer will did he manage to hide this from his friends. He told them, “I feel her. Elise is near, though I do not see her here.” Fairly, Legolas reminded them, “You are no safer in the day than in the night. And none of you yet knows whether you may see her merely because you are Elf-kind. I am going with you.”

They could not contend this, for the young Silvan had the right of it. Even Kalin could see the good logic behind his Prince’s statement, wish though he did to keep Legolas here in this bed. They discerned, as did Legolas, that there was no time for quarrel, at any rate. If they wanted to save Estel’s and perchance Legolas’ lives, they needed to act now. Elrohir and Kalin both stood from the bed. The moment he was on his feet, Kalin stretched his arm out to aid his Prince in scooting to the edge and then into standing from the cot. Legolas accepted the help although he could not look Kalin in the eye wished he did not need aid. Legolas took the single step from the side of the bed to the desk and began belting on his weapons. They were useless against the haunt but the Wood-Elf had a portent separate from Elise skittering along the edges of his rational thought, one that warned him of the possibility of impending danger of a different sort. Everyone in the room observed him for some sign that he would falter in his task.

They watched as if they waited for his death.

His hands trembled as he fastened his long knife’s sheath around his slim hips. They took note of his tremors, as well. As a Prince, Legolas was accustomed to being scrutinized and criticized – and not just by his father. It was the way of life for any Lord, Lady, or member of royalty. But to have his friends do it and to know that they did it out of fear he would quite literally die at any moment was making the Wood-Elf’s nervous apprehension grow, and thus his shaking to worsen, and thus their fear for him to heighten.

Try though he did, Legolas could not manage to buckle the belt of his quiver because of his ever-increasing trembling. When Kalin seemed that he might try to take over this task, Legolas purposely prevented his sentry’s aid by turning on heel so he faced the dark end of the ensconcement, only to whirl right into Elrohir in doing so. The young Noldo’s hands shot out to steady Legolas, and this help he did not dismiss, at least; in fact, with a comforting, sad smile for Kalin, Elrohir then turned his smile to Legolas, but said to the others, “Go get ready, brothers,” he called Elladan, Estel, and even Kalin, before he reached out to take the belt’s end from Legolas to do as Kalin had wanted to do, to fasten it for the younger Elf.

He allowed Elrohir to buckle the belt of his quiver and then adjust it; he was no more able to meet Elrohir’s gaze than he was able to meet Kalin’s regard a moment ago, at least until the younger twin laid his hands upon Legolas’ shoulders. The Prince looked up in expectation of a lecture, but instead, Elrohir cast a glance to the opposite end to make sure the others were in the main room, and then told Legolas, “Thank you, Greenleaf. Elladan would never admit it, and it hurts me to say it, but we thank you.”

“For what?” he whispered in like tone, although it was less a desire to remain unheard and more because he could not draw in sufficient air to speak properly causing him to reply so softly.

“For trying to save Estel, muindor. Elladan and I no more want your death than we do Estel’s death, but regardless, you have given Estel time,” Elrohir acknowledged, showing that he understood Legolas’ intent, even if the others could not, while also speaking on his twin’s behalf.

It was likely Elrohir knew just how Elladan felt about all this, so Legolas did not question the younger twin speaking for his older brother in offering their gratitude. His lifelong friend swept the hair from the Silvan’s shoulders and straightened Legolas’ cloak around him. Then, with a frown becoming deeper when he noticed how badly the Wood-Elf trembled and despite knowing it was not cold to cause it, Elrohir removed his own cloak to drape it over Legolas, as well, in the hopes of offering some succor to the Silvan Prince.

As he did so, Elrohir explained, “We would have arrived this morning only in time to dig Estel’s grave, but now, with your sacrifice, we have time to try to save you both. But promise me, Greenleaf. Promise me you will give to him no more of your faer’s light. If you die but somehow we end this curse in time to save Estel, it will eat at Estel for the rest of his years, as it will for the rest of mine and Elladan’s lives. Promise me, muindor. Promise me you will do it no more.”

He could make this promise easily. He had nothing left to give Estel, Legolas was sure of it. While Elrohir finished tying his own cloak about Legolas’ throat and pulled up the hood, the Silvan honestly oathed, “I promise you, brother.”

Elrohir gave Legolas a sunny, forgiving smile, which somehow served only to cut afresh the Prince’s already wounded faer, for he could see in the twin’s face that Elrohir expected for both his Silvan and Adan brother to die today, but could smile because he was glad to have had the chance to see them both before it happened and to at least have been given the chance to save them, rather than have come too late entirely.

Before they could leave the ensconcement and feeling he would not live to see another sunrise, Legolas grabbed the tunic at Elrohir’s sides and stepped nearer to his Noldorin friend. Legolas was as close to Elladan as he was to Elrohir, but in this moment, with Elrohir’s verbal admission of understanding and gratitude, the Prince felt in his heart that the younger twin would be the one best apt to convey his message to his father, his King. “Elrohir. Promise me something in return.”

He expected for the Noldo to waver with suspicion, but with his emerald eyes glinting from the moisture gathered therein as the light from the lamp lambently glittered in their fervent depths, Elrohir agreed at once with staunch eagerness, “Anything, Greenleaf.”

Legolas found it hard to face his friend when he spoke and so took another step closer, laid his tired head down upon the elder Elf’s shoulder, and wrapped his arms around the twin’s torso. In fraternal love fostered over hundreds of years, Elrohir returned this embrace fiercely. “Please. There are many things I would wish to tell my father,” he began and felt Elrohir’s hold tighten around him, “but it is only a simple message I want for you to relay. Just tell him I love him, I forgive him, and in my death, I hope he can forgive me. Tell him that with Naneth I will await his arrival, and we hope it will be the Unmaking or his arrival in Valinor and not his death to bring our family back together.”

“I will, Greenleaf. I will tell him,” the younger twin agreed at once, exhaling a stuttering, quick breath at the sorrow he felt to hear Legolas sound so certain of his demise. Going a step further, Elrohir pushed at the young Silvan to move him away so he could look in Legolas’ face, adding, “And I will tell your Minyatar of your love, and all of your friends. I will keep watch over Elladan and Kalin, and Estel, if Eru wills that he lives by the providence of your sacrifice, so you need not worry over them in the Awaiting. But do not think I will let you die so easily, Greenleaf, and nor will Elladan, Estel, or Kalin. We need you, all of us,” Elrohir told the laegel as he bent a bit lower so he could look directly into the Prince’s downcast gaze.

He could find nothing to reply to this. Elrohir’s words lifted a burden from his heart and shoulders, and the younger Elf found it in him to smile back at his friend. So instead of speaking, he merely nodded, which was enough for the Noldo for now.

“Come then, let us be off as quickly as possible,” Elrohir suggested, using his hold upon Legolas’ shoulders to steer him around to face the ensconcement’s far end, where the opening laid. Gently, Elrohir prompted the Prince into walking, while keeping his hands ever upon the Silvan in congenial desire to be of aid should Legolas require it. As they slowly ambled forward, Elrohir asked of Legolas, “And don’t be too hard on Kalin, brother. He has been beside himself with worry these past months. He was so excited to find you here and ostensibly well, only now to discover that all his worry was right and his Prince on the cusp of death yet again. He lives his life for you, as you have chosen to live your life for Estel. You would feel the same as Kalin does should Estel have done for you what you have done for Estel – if such a thing were possible. Do not fault him for feeling betrayed.”

Again, Legolas could find nothing to say in response, though this time he did not nod his head in agreement, for Kalin’s words still prickled in the laegel’s mind. The Prince carefully trod before Elrohir, his hand out to the bookcases just in case he lost his footing. He thought perhaps the twins were right and it wasn’t that he had given so much of himself to Estel that he had ensured his imminent demise’s immediate arrival, but that he might recuperate enough to live with this curse for at least as long as it took to see the end of their plan – that is, if he did as he had promised and thus did nothing to prolong Estel’s life further. He slowed before reaching the end of the ensconcement to gather himself but halted entirely when he overheard a conversation between his sentry and the Ranger.

“Forgive me, Estel,” he heard Kalin tell the Adan in a whisper likely meant to be low enough for Legolas not to notice. “I should not have sniped at you as I did. Legolas does as he pleases and I know you would as soon die than let him sacrifice himself to save you.”

“Forget it,” the Ranger replied, his tone less than forgiving. They sounded near to the bookshelves, as if they stood there to await Elrohir and Legolas’ dawdling coming into the main schoolroom. “Just take better care of how you speak to Greenleaf, please, Kalin. You have wounded him with your anger more than could I or anyone else.”

The Noldo gave the back of Legolas’ head a wry smile, for he knew well why the Prince had paused; hearing as did Legolas the private exchange between Silvan sentry and Adan, Elrohir nudged Legolas forward to incite him into walking the last few steps to the opening between the secluded area and the larger area beyond. Elrohir did this to end the whispered dialogue between the sentry and Ranger so as to prevent Legolas from overhearing anything that might serve to upset him, but also because he felt the strong need to hurry to save his Wood-Elf and Adan brothers’ lives.

He swept aside the blanket covering the ensconcement’s opening, interrupting Aragorn and Kalin’s whispering. Legolas could see Kalin’s irritation at Estel’s insinuation and interference between his and his Prince’s disagreement, though whatever Kalin meant to say was forgotten when he noticed said Prince finally coming out into the main room. Pretending as if he had not heard them, Legolas tried also to hide his wavering gait, but when he passed under the blanket, it snagged on the sheath of his long knife and thus tugged him to the side, which was enough to unbalance entirely the already unsteady Wood-Elf. Instinctively, the Ranger bounded forward and reached out to balance the Wood-Elf, but suddenly remembering he was not to touch Legolas, as if the Prince were a venomous snake that Aragorn had nearly reached into the mouth of, Estel stepped back and yanked his hand away ere it came close to Legolas, and thus did not aid the Silvan. Luckily for the Wood-Elf, whose body was so tired and his mind so weary that he did not recuperate his equilibrium as easily as he ought to have, Elrohir was lingering close behind him in fear of this very thing and caught Legolas by his upper arms ere the laegel disgraced himself by falling to his knees.

 _Estel no longer trusts me,_ the Prince lamented, turning his gaze away from Aragorn’s remorseful one. It was his own fault, surely, but it hurt no less. Of course, Estel wanted only for Legolas to live, to have the same chance as did he to survive the haunt’s curse, and so avoided touching the Elf to ensure the Silvan did not abuse his ability to share the light of his faer with the human. Legolas had proven himself devious, and for this, he could see the hurt in Estel’s face. _Elrohir has the right of it. Kalin is angry with me, feeling betrayed for what I have done for Estel; I would feel the same if Estel had done it for me. I am surprised Estel is not also irate._ He might rather the human be wrathful rather than looking so very troubled and wounded. The Elf and Ranger had spent the night previous and this morning in leisurely pleasure. Now, Aragorn suspected that rather than for the enjoyment of each other’s bodies, Legolas had desired him for devious purposes. It was untrue. He had not needed Estel’s shaft inside him to do as he had, but had only desired the man’s touch and to bring Estel pleasure. _I suppose there is no use explaining any of this to him,_ he rued again, _because there is no time._

Yet, the Wood-Elf understood he had very little left to offer the human. If he gave any more of himself, he would die and thus be useless in helping them to see and communicate with Elise, if the need arose. For now, he would need to abstain from his desire to ensure Estel’s survival with his own death. If their plan to end Elise was unfruitful, or if after her end his and Estel’s curse was not lifted, then he would finish his aim and be at peace that he had done all he could to save his Ranger. Even still, he longed for the man’s touch. It had not even been an hour since Kalin had pulled him away from the human, but not being allowed to touch Estel created a greater desire within him to do so, much like how one who loves drinking wine might not fiend for it until told he could drink it no longer. Moreover, he wanted to soothe the guilt and pain upon Estel’s face – guilt and pain that Legolas had placed there with his actions – just as Estel wanted to soothe the exhaustion and fear upon the Prince’s visage with his kind, loving touch, and to assure himself of the Prince’s well-being. Most disturbingly, since the Wood-Elf might die without warning, it occurred to Legolas that he might have felt Aragorn’s skin upon his own and enjoyed the heat of his lover’s flesh for the last time. He may never have another chance to do so. This alone nearly broke him.

Elrohir guided the Wood-Elf toward the table, where he intended for the Prince to await their departure. As he settled Legolas into a chair for the moment while they finished their readying, Elrohir offered to his friends and brothers, “I will find Halbarad to tell him of our plans. He, Tomas, or Jakob may wish to accompany us.”

With the nod of agreement from his elder brother, the younger twin left to do just that, though he was soon followed by Elladan, who told the Prince, sentry, and Ranger, “We will need to borrow horses. I will ask Tomas if there are fresh horses to be had so we can let our own mounts rest, if possible, and make certain that Reana knows where we are going. I don’t think she is pleased for Elrohir and I to be surrounded by all these Edain, since she was charged by Ada with our safekeeping,” the elder twin chuckled sardonically to himself, giving Kalin a companionable clap on the back as he took off out the door, also, while leaving Estel, Kalin, and Legolas alone.

They could have walked to the farm, but it would be much quicker to ride, while also ensuring that Legolas would make it there, since he was not certain for how much longer he could even remain sentient. In uncommon and uncomfortable silence, Legolas sat at the table, while Estel fiddled with his weapons and Kalin paced close to his charge, at the ready to catch Legolas should he topple over, it seemed.

 _I wish we were alone,_ he thought of himself and Estel, for he wanted to speak to the Ranger, to make sure Aragorn knew he was not accountable for what Legolas had done, that the Elf had done it from desperation and love, but also to assure Estel that Legolas had not desired him the night previous and this morning for anything other than a craving for Aragorn’s touch and to bring his Ranger pleasure. _I doubt us having a single moment alone before all this is over, whether it eventuates in my death or both of our deaths. It is just as well I spent all of last night memorizing him._

And he had. Throughout the night, Legolas had tried to sear into his mind the piquant smell of the man, which due to his Elven heritage was never the distinctive reek of many human men’s body odor, but a scent of freshly turned soil, dewy autumn leaves, and of salty sweat and old leather. He had tried to memorize the crisp sensation of the light pelt of hair upon Estel’s chest and navel, how while lying abed it scratched and tickled him from his upper back to his rear when the man was pressed tightly to him from behind– especially so in how Aragorn favored burying his whiskered face against the Elf’s nape. Legolas closed his eyes now and recalled the achingly sweet feeling of Estel’s shaft inside him, glutting him deeply while stretching him wide open, after having filled the Elf with his seed.

A different sort of shudder ran through the Wood-Elf. His face flushed as his recollection of the night before and this morning dredged up an acute yearning for Estel even now. Legolas cleared his throat and reached for the tumbler of tea upon the table in front of him – one given to either he or Aragorn, but which neither of them had touched. His fingers numbed and cold, Legolas could not coax his stiff and shaking hand into wrapping around the ceramic cup, and caused it to clatter along the table, where it spilled over the rim in a trail of glistening drops.

He briefly closed his eyes again in frustration; when he opened them, Estel was there beside him, kneeling at the edge of his chair within his reach, but the Ranger watched Legolas warily, prepared to move quickly to avoid the Prince’s touch should the Elf offer it. “What is it, Greenleaf?”

And then, Kalin appeared on the other side of Legolas, intending to prevent the Adan and Elf from getting too close. At the sight of their misgiving, Legolas turned his attention back to the tumbler and tried to force his hand to close around it. “I am fine. I wanted only a drink to wet my mouth,” he murmured, sounding hoarse as if in support of this claim, though the huskiness of his voice came from Estel’s nearness after Legolas’ prurient thoughts of the man, and not because he needed to slake his thirst.

Kalin took the cup from his Prince’s fumbling fingers, brought it closer to Legolas, and then pressed the younger Silvan’s hand around it while keeping his around Legolas’ fingers; by this, he aided Legolas into bringing the tumbler up to his mouth, holding the cup steady while the Prince drained the tepid liquid in one long swallow. When done, Kalin took the cup from Legolas and sat it upon the table, stepped back, and then waited, evidently hoping Estel would move away so Kalin would know his charge was safe from the temptation of touching the Ranger and thus potentially ending his immortal life.

Aragorn, who had remained kneeling upon the floor during all this, was watching Legolas with a mild, knowing grin upon his face – a grin that brightened considerably when the Wood-Elf flushed slightly upon looking at the Ranger, while the Prince’s lips curled into an abashed smile of his own. Aragorn was well acquainted with the signs of his Elven lover’s lust and knew right now what thoughts were occupying Legolas’ mind, making the Silvan’s cerulean eyes slightly glassy and the blue of them darkening to purple as his pupils widened. The human watched the Elf wet his parted lips with his tongue, his ever-present desire for Legolas roused just from the sight of this. But when Estel lifted a hand to touch Legolas – perhaps to stroke the Wood-Elf’s flushed cheek or push aside a stray hair – the intimate moment was broken, for the man abruptly recalled he could not handle the Elf any longer, and Aragorn pulled his hand back before standing and moving away, his smile now a consternated, careworn frown.

If Kalin had any notion of the undercurrent behind his Prince and the Ranger’s actions, he did not show it, but asked, “Do you need more? My cup is still full.”

Legolas shook his head in negation, pulled his hands into his lap, and stared at them. The weight of Kalin’s worried glare and Estel’s silent rejection was heavier than the burden Elrohir had lifted from the Silvan’s shoulders a short while ago with his promises to Legolas, such that the Prince felt the all too familiar constriction of anxiety twisting around his torso. After a while, Kalin began his pacing anew, Aragorn distracted himself by looking over the supplies stored in the schoolhouse, and Legolas rested his forearms upon the table, while longing to lay his head down upon them. Just when he felt he could no longer remain upright, when he felt certain that he might need to stand to keep from falling out of his chair altogether, Elladan and Elrohir returned to the schoolhouse with Jakob and Halbarad on their heels.

“Tomas and Reana have the horses saddled and ready. And Arato is coming,” Elrohir told Legolas with a snort of subdued hilarity, while not bothering to explain why this was so.

He might have found this amusing had not the thought occurred to him, _So someone said my name in the stables. No doubt, the twins were speaking about me between themselves or to Jakob and Halbarad, likely discussing why I am so daft and eager to die._

Being that they were primed to go, Kalin stood beside Legolas and once again held his hand out to aid his Prince in rising from the chair, but again, the younger Silvan ignored this offer. Placing both hands upon the table in front of him, Legolas lugged himself to his feet, stamped down the grunt of exertion the simple action tried to wring from him, and then walked the opposite direction around the table, consequently avoiding Kalin entirely. He ought not to torment his sentry right now, he knew; he did not want to die and leave Kalin distressed for having upset his already fraught Prince further, but Legolas could not bring himself to forget Kalin’s earlier castigation. When he rounded the end of the table closest to the door, Elrohir once more gladly took over the task of being Legolas’ keeper, rather than Kalin, who was accustomed to doing so; and once more, the younger twin shot Kalin a flashing smile of sympathy.

Straightening his shoulders and his back to walk with as much dignity as he could muster, Legolas followed Elladan out the door with Elrohir just behind him. Jakob and Halbarad, who had come inside in blustery uneasiness but had not spoken, went out, as well, with Kalin and Aragorn the last to leave the schoolhouse. In the yard, five horses were saddled and waiting.

 _Five horses. I wonder who is going and who is staying behind,_ he considered. Surreptitiously, or so he hoped, Legolas grabbed hold of Elladan’s cloak as they walked down the steps, and feeling this, Elladan slowed so that the laegel could use him for stability. The sun shone bright and cold upon the Wood-Elf and a light breeze blew his hair around in strands of what looked like spun gold to the Edain children across the creek, who were in the village’s green chasing each other until they saw the Elves and Rangers coming out of the school. He thought again, _It will be better to die in the open air, amongst the grass and trees, while being of some use, rather than lying on that hard bed inside the school, useless and burdensome._

Legolas walked to Arato, where he gratefully took the reins from Reana with all intention of mounting his own horse. _I will be surprised if they don’t insist upon someone riding with me,_ he thought, giving Arato a brief, welcomed rub to his muzzle. If Legolas had to ride with someone, he wished for it to be Estel, but since they no longer trusted him to be around his Adan lover, the Prince knew this would not be allowed. Elladan, Elrohir, and Estel all chose a horse, leaving Arato for Legolas and the last one for Kalin, he assumed, but sure enough, his sentry began over to the Prince with all intention of riding along with his charge or if nothing else, to help him mount. Quickly, Legolas swung into the saddle, his abrupt action making the azure blue of the sky and the feverish green of the grass spin and switch places with each other in a tumultuous circle. He grabbed the pommel of the saddle so tightly that he lost hold of the reins. They were offered to him by Kalin, who worriedly looked up to his Prince and clearly wished to climb up behind Legolas to ascertain that the younger Silvan would not fall while riding.

“Go, Kalin. Mount quickly and let us be off,” he murmured, dampening his irritation to speak with some measure of affability. The thought of his dying and leaving Kalin to feel guilty over the spat between them tempered Legolas’ hurt feelings. He assured his sentry, meeting Kalin’s gaze for a fleeting moment, “I am fine to ride alone.”

Kalin plainly did not believe his Prince but did not want to question him with the Rangers around them and the villagers not far beyond hearing. So, Kalin went to the remaining horse, which is when Jakob piped up, saying with his usual joviality, out of place though it seemed presently, “We seem to be a horse short. There’s no way you all are going treasure hunting without me! I was once a sneak thief, just like Emler, mind you, so if there are any locks to be picked or secretive hiding places, I will be needed.”

“Nor will I be left behind,” Reana told them all. She went directly to Kalin and gave him a beautiful, expectant smile. He smiled back at her but then looked to his Prince, his smile falling from his face.

“Then four of us will have to ride double. That is no problem. The more the merrier,” Elrohir joked as he handed his reins to Jakob. “Reana can ride with Kalin, and I will ride with Greenleaf, if that is fine by you,” he asked Legolas as he came to stand beside Arato and the Prince thereon the dappled grey steed. “To be honest, I’m rather tired of looking at the back of Elladan’s head, since I’ve spent the last week doing so while following behind him on our way here. You don’t mind, do you, brother?” he jested in forced humor.

Eager to be off and have this done, and having no viable excuse for denying Elrohir’s request, Legolas nodded and scooted forward on the saddle, such that the Noldo had to ride behind the Prince. When Elrohir mounted, Legolas kept the reins, and Elrohir did not complain. As they began away, the Prince incited Arato into a trot so that they led the band of Elves and Rangers. Elrohir did not speak but Legolas could feel his desire to question the Silvan’s reason for wanting to lead their way, so Legolas told his friend, “I want to keep watch out for Elise.”

Elrohir did not respond. The horses’ hooves clacked across the wooden bridge spanning the creek. They crossed the village green, scattering the playing children there, who ran away laughing and screaming shrilly in mock fear. However, the fear upon the adults’ faces was very real. It took the Prince a moment to realize that the villagers weren’t all of a sudden afraid of the Eldar and Rangers, but feared that the Elves and their fellow Edain were abandoning them. No sooner had this thought come to him than some of the villagers began to call out to their party as they passed along the main road leading northwards out to the farm. Jakob responded to these calls with repeated, short explanations that they would return, that they were off to investigate something, and not to worry, for Halbarad and Tomas were at the schoolhouse had they any questions, and Liandra was about the village seeing to her patients, if she were needed.

 _It feels good to be astride my own horse, in the sunlight, in the breeze, and amidst nature._ Legolas took in a carefully slow, deep breath, enjoying the fresh air. Even still, the now familiar sensation he knew to be an indication of Elise’s presence was growing evermore acute, until Legolas began to scan tiredly the Edain in the house yards around them in search of the haunt. Not seeing her, though, Legolas led the others out of the village. Despite having just spent a week travelling to this village, Arato didn’t seem fatigued in the least, but kept a steady cantering pace, and was clearly content to have his beloved master riding him.

They had just passed the last of the close-knit houses along the village’s outskirts when on the road ahead of them, Legolas spotted the dark haired, dark fleshed, and well-made blacksmith to whom they had spoken earlier that day. Wendt ambled along with a sturdy shovel hoisted over his shoulder and a mace belted to his waist. With a barely perceptible pull of the reins, Legolas slowed Arato, which caused the others behind them to slow, as well. They could all see Wendt ahead of them, but Legolas saw beyond the unsuspecting man. The blacksmith, having heard the beating horses’ hooves upon the limestone slab road, stopped and turned to see who approached him from behind.

This saved his life, more than likely, for just a few paces in front of Wendt stood Elise.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided how to end it. It will not be pleasant but that's a while ahead. Enjoy.

At once, Legolas swung a leg over the saddle and slid from Arato’s back, surprising Elrohir, who did not even have the chance to ask what the Prince was doing before Legolas stood on the ground. Fear gave the exhausted Prince energy, allowing him to trot to Wendt. A call from behind asked the Prince what was wrong, but Legolas did not pay heed to it, and thus did not even know who had asked him this. When close enough, the Silvan grabbed Wendt’s upper arm to stop him from moving forward, though the blacksmith had been standing there watching Legolas sprint to him, his handsome face twisted into a shamelessly lusty but altogether affable smile. He ignored this, as well, since he thought only to save the man’s life and gave all of his attention to the diaphanous, monochrome being waiting a very short distance ahead.

“Go stand with the others,” he implored breathlessly of Wendt, offering no explanation for his demand. “Stay there until it is safe.”

“Safe?” the blacksmith echoed, his smile still upon his face, though his confusion was leeching away his startled cheer to see the Silvan.

Legolas strode a step forward before he was halted by a hand to the back of his borrowed cloak, which caused the fabric cinched at his throat to gather uncomfortably and thus caused his head to bend backward. Between how his head suddenly twisted back and how he turned on heel too quickly, intending to castigate whoever held him, Legolas became nauseated when the verdure of the fields around him became a whirling mess of greens and browns, which only stabilized into some semblance of normalcy when Kalin grasped his Prince’s shoulders to both steady him and keep him from moving away.

“I’m sorry, Legolas,” Kalin first said after seeing how he had nearly hurt his charge, ere he asked, “But is she here?”

“Yes. She is here,” he confirmed to Kalin.

He looked over his sentry’s shoulder only to find the others were now crowded behind his fellow Wood-Elf in a vague half-circle, all of them leading their mounts rather than riding them, and all of them gazing around for some sign of the haunt. That none of them stared right where she stood behind Legolas evinced to the Prince that as he had expected, none of his fellow Elves were any more capable of seeing her than were the Edain. _It would have been easier had Kalin, Elladan, or Elrohir been able to see her, at least. Especially if I die before she is dispersed. One of them could have protected the others and the villagers by knowing where she is,_ he regretted in disappointment, although without surprise.

Elladan gingerly came closer, his steps careful and slow, and his wariness reminding the Prince of someone trying to creep into a room riddled with traps, for wisely, Elladan was not eager to walk into the haunt accidentally. The elder Noldo wanted to know, “Where, Greenleaf? I see nothing.”

In frustration and with similar care, Elrohir came to stand shoulder to shoulder beside his twin, to confer with Elladan, “I cannot see her, either, muindor. Kalin?” he asked the sentry. Kalin only shook his head in distressed negation, telling them by this that he could not tell where Elise was, either.

“She stands a few paces away.” Just saying this made Legolas turn back to her, for he did not want to lose track of her, nor want her to move without his knowing. Although when he had spoken to her the night before he had asked her to behave and still thought she might obey his plea, that she was here now, standing as if in wait for Wendt, made him doubt whether she would refrain from hurting anyone else. However, because she only stood there rather than attack them all out of panic or spite gave him some hope. He pulled his shoulders out of Kalin’s benevolent but heavy hands. “All of you – stay here and stay still while I talk to her. Stay together and stay quiet. We do not want to upset her or drive her to act irrationally out of fear.”

Wendt hefted his shovel, spun in a slow circle, and looked around at the Elves and Rangers, then back to the road before them. Giving the Wood-Elf a kind smile the likes of which a parent might give to a child who spoke of monsters under the bed, the blacksmith inquired of Legolas, “Talk to who, friend?”

He knew Estel and the others might still wish to keep Wendt in the dark in concerns to what was happening, but Legolas did not see the point of it right now – not with Wendt’s life in danger. He replied simply, “Elise,” before he strode forward again towards the haunt who watched his approach with eager anticipation.

“But you said she was dead,” Wendt called after Legolas.

“She is,” he replied, and since the whole of his attention was upon Elise, Legolas missed the blacksmith’s nearly comical look of utter confusion.

He stopped just out of arm’s reach of the girl, though of course, if she wanted, she could glide forward and have her algid hand upon him and he would not have the chance to flee. She smiled at Legolas with such gladness that the Elf was reminded again how Elise must be happy merely to have someone’s notice, for someone actually to see her, to take notice of her, when she had been alone and ignored for so long except by those whom she killed in the dark of night. And none of those whom she had killed would have been glad to be her companion, being that she had just stolen the vivacity of their souls.

Behind him, Legolas could unclearly hear Aragorn and Jakob whispering to Wendt; he thought they were explaining to the smith what was happening, now that they had no choice except to tell him, but the drained Wood-Elf could not both listen to their conversation and be cautious of the specter afore him, so ignored all but Elise. The Adan girl lifted one small, translucent, and beckoning hand, offering it to Legolas to hold, to greet her, and Legolas found himself drawn to the child. Feeling as if his arm were caught in a vat of cold molasses, the Elf sluggishly lifted his limb to take her hand; this caused her smile to widen and his mind to go blank.

Heavy footfalls pounded the ground behind him and again someone took hold of the Prince by the back of his cloak, though this time, it was Aragorn who had come up behind the Wood-Elf. The man had stopped midsentence in his explanation to Wendt once he realized what Legolas was doing, and had sprinted forward to stop the Silvan, reaching out for the Elf in a desperate attempt to keep Legolas from coming into contact with Elise. Unable to see Elise and thus unable to see how close her and Legolas’ hands had been, Aragorn did not know he had acted just in time to stop the Silvan’s fingers from brushing the transparent digits of the specter in front of him. With a harsh yank of the cloak’s cloth, Estel caused the Prince to stumble backwards, the borrowed cloak once more closing about his neck and causing Legolas’ head to whip back, while the force made his knees buckle and the feeling of falling incited Legolas’ arms to flail as he sought purchase upon something or someone to keep him from tumbling to the ground.

“Greenleaf!” the riled Adan cried out, released the cloth of the cloak, and then stepped into his lover’s falling body to try to wrap his arms around the Prince before Legolas’ tired legs gave out under him.

Estel had no more than taken hold of Legolas’ hips before he was pushed away violently, as Kalin would not allow the human to handle his charge out of fear of his Prince imparting the last of his faer’s vitality to the Ranger. Aragorn staggered away but did not fall, while Kalin stumbled after him and nearly felled the man anyway by knocking into Estel when he tried to avoid bowling over his Prince. Thus, with Estel’s steadying arms and form removed and Kalin too busy trying to keep the Ranger away from his charge, Legolas fell to his knees with a thud jarring the whole of his trembling body. He caught himself with his hands just before he fell face first into the paving stones of the road. His consciousness nearly fled him. Although not exactly injured, his intentional draining of his faer had sapped all of his energy, and the young Silvan’s mind spun with fatigue much like his body reeled forward when his exhaustion whelmed his fear of Elise’s presence, which had been his only impetus in staying aware and active so far.

He managed to remain conscious only because of the ear-splitting volume of Jakob’s angry bellow, “Good gods, Elf! What was that about? Let Aragorn go!” the fiery-haired Ranger complained of Kalin on his Chieftain’s behalf, having taken umbrage for how Kalin treated Aragorn. It seemed that Estel was still trying to be free to aid Legolas, and Kalin was still attempting to hold the Ranger back from doing so, for the Adan and sentry were huffing and tussling.

From beneath the fall of his golden hair around his face, Legolas saw three pairs of booted feet as one pair trotted to where he knelt and the other two ran to where Aragorn and Kalin were nearly to the point of an actual fight rather than a mere scuffle. Glancing up, the Prince saw how Estel was enraged and trying to remove the Silvan sentry’s hold of him, though both Elladan and Elrohir were now pulling the Wood-Elf and Ranger apart and trying to calm them concurrently. With the three brothers and sentry all shouting at each other simultaneously, Legolas’ dizzy mind could not decipher what was being said.

 _They will end up killing each other,_ the laegel worried of his lover’s jealousy and his sentry’s overprotectiveness. Aragorn was already irate with Kalin for upsetting Legolas, while despite his apology to the Adan, Kalin was still enraged with Estel for allowing his Prince to give his faer’s light to the man. A heavily calloused hand swept across one side of his face and then slid under his ear and around his neck to lie upon his nape, while the other dark-skinned hand lifted Legolas’ face by a gentle nudge under his chin.

He looked up into the dark eyes of Wendt – eyes showing nothing but concern for him. Had this been another time – even a day earlier – Legolas might have knocked the smith’s hands away and pulled his long knife to threaten Wendt for touching him. In fact, he had done that very thing to Jakob the night before, and Jakob had not stared at Legolas with salacious interest as had Wendt stared at the Elf all through their conversation with the smith this morning. Yet, the Prince did not fear the prurience he saw in the man’s gaze, not as he would have a day earlier. The blacksmith’s thumb lightly caressed Legolas’ chin a single time ere he seemed to realize he was being too familiar with the Silvan, gave Legolas a faint smile, and flushed a little while adjusting his hold of the Elf to his shoulders, instead.

“Are you alright?” the blacksmith asked the Prince while easing the Elf back so he knelt upright, at least. The Prince only nodded and closed his eyes, which caused his cognition to darken again. He pitched forward once more, only for Wendt to catch him by the shoulders again.

Across the way, Reana stood with the horses in confused shock. Elladan and Elrohir were standing between Kalin and Aragorn as though it was necessary to keep the two from fighting, but the Ranger and sentry had forgotten their dispute and now glared at where Legolas and Wendt knelt close together upon the ground.

The Wood-Elf cast a quick glance over his shoulder to ascertain that Elise had not moved; he instantly regretted it, for his body would not seem to cooperate, the spinning world around him narrowed until he felt to be looking through pinholes, and Legolas quickly turned back to Wendt before he lost sentience completely. He did so just in time to see Kalin striding forward with the intent of physically removing his Prince from Wendt’s kind hold, but Legolas held his hand up to stop his sentry’s advance, and luckily, Kalin halted. Aragorn appeared on the verge of thrashing someone – anyone, it seemed to the Elf, might suffice as the target for the man’s rage, but most especially the blacksmith who had his hands upon Legolas. Only Elladan’s hold of him and Elrohir’s barring presence kept the Ranger from doing what Kalin also desired to do in sprinting forward to rip the blacksmith away from the Wood-Elf. However, when the Ranger truly took notice of how Wendt was holding Legolas up from collapsing forward onto the paving stones, Aragorn forgot his jealousy and anger and wished only to be of aid to the Prince.

The man strained against Elladan’s grasp and peered over Elrohir’s shoulder, his need to come to the Elf to assist him in rising and to see if Legolas was alright keen upon his bearded features. Aragorn said simply, “Greenleaf,” but all of his anxiety, terror, and love were contained in that single utterance.

“Stay back. Stay still. I want none of you to be touched by her,” he ordered them in a harsh, rasping voice infused with all the princely hauteur he could generate.

At the Silvan’s demand and to Legolas’ relief, his friends obeyed. They remained as they were – still and wary – while watching Legolas since they could not see Elise to watch her, and all of them wondering if the Wood-Elf had the wherewithal to rise to his feet. Rapidly, Legolas twisted his torso to look to the Adan child’s specter, eager to ascertain if she had moved. Before him, Wendt released the Silvan to climb to his feet and then leant down, grabbing Legolas by his arms and lifting the Prince as if he were a sack of feathers. For a moment, Legolas was so high in the air that his feet dangled slightly above the ground, at least until he managed to straighten his legs to try to stand on his own. Once this was accomplished, Wendt did not move away but remained beside the Elf to ensure Legolas did not fall again. The Prince ignored the escalating wrath of Kalin and Aragorn, thinking, _They must assume Wendt is frightening me. Am I some child needing comfort from the terror brought about by the mere proximity of human men?_ He did not answer his own question and disregarded the insistent voice inside his mind telling him that he had only stopped from killing Jakob the night previous upon hearing and being comforted by Estel having said the laegel’s name.

Desirous to show he was not bothered by Wendt’s nearness, as truly he was not, Legolas gave Wendt a genuine smile, which the blacksmith returned happily. “Thank you,” he told the man. Legolas cautiously shifted until he was facing north, until he was facing Elise again. “Your uncle is very strong,” he told the haunt, who had been standing there watching all this activity with confusion as to the nuance of anger, jealousy, and fear behind the adults’ violently inexplicable actions. “Did he pick you up and swing you about like your grandfather did, like you showed me, Elise?” he asked.

From her surprised smile, Legolas knew he had pleased her by knowing her name. He found himself smiling back at the haunt, happy purely because he had made the child happy. With much difficulty, he stepped closer to Elise and then swept his arm back to indicate the Elves and Rangers behind him, only to accidently hit Wendt, who stayed upon Legolas’ heels with his own arm out to catch the Prince, should he fall again. Legolas told the Adan girl, “These are the friends I told you of, the ones who are here to help you. And of course, you know your uncle, Wendt. You mustn’t touch them. You mustn’t hurt them, Elise. We are all here to help you. Will you promise me not to hurt them?”

Legolas could sense Estel and Kalin’s sudden rise in anxiety at Legolas’ step forward, though he did not move much closer to the haunt, nor did he lift his hand as he had before. They all stayed still, as he had asked of them, save for the sympathetic blacksmith, who again trailed behind the Prince with the clear intention of being the one to keep the Elf upright should his exhaustion cause him to falter.

“She is truly here, Legolas? You can see her?” the blacksmith asked the Prince in a quiet, meekly innocent voice that did not match his virile, brawny body. “Elise is here?”

“She is here, my friend. Right in front of us.” A strange opportunity now presented itself; it was one for which Legolas was thankful, as he hoped it would offer both Elise and Wendt the chance to do what few found possible – speaking to a deceased loved one. “She can hear me. I believe she can hear you, as well, if there is something you would like to tell her.”

For a moment, the blacksmith was too overwhelmed to answer. Legolas was unsure of just how much Estel and Jakob had managed to explain to Wendt before Aragorn left off their explication to run to Legolas’ side a few minutes earlier, but apparently Wendt had been told enough to know that Elise was the one causing the deaths, for staring out into what to him was empty space in the road before them, Wendt said to his niece, “I hear you have been causing mischief. Do as Legolas tells you, ok? Don’t hurt anyone else. I promise you, just as this kind Elf here has promised – I will help you find your way back to your mum and da, little Lissie,” he called her, using a nickname only Wendt ever used for her.

Elise’s flaming, cerise eyes were brimming with the molten, liquid fire of her extraordinary tears, but she smiled at her uncle and Legolas, and then nodded. Realizing that Wendt could not see her, Legolas told the blacksmith, “She agrees. She has heard you.”

Behind and slightly to his left, Wendt let loose a ragged and disbelieving breath, ere he sucked in a noisy inhale. The man fisted a hand into the Prince’s borrowed cloak, though whether this was to be prepared to keep the Silvan from keeling over or for his own comfort, the laegel did not look to the smith to try to ascertain. A moment later, Legolas felt Estel’s enraged presence growing closer, though again, he did not turn his head away from the haunt to see if this was so. Aragorn spoke to the Wood-Elf’s right, slightly behind Legolas, and inquired frantically, “Are you well, Greenleaf?”

“I’m fine,” the Silvan Prince reassured his human lover, though as usual, none who heard him believed this paltry answer.

Elise looked around at the others, two trails of glimmering fire upon her translucent cheeks from the happy tears she had shed, ere her regard turned to Estel. From the first moment Legolas had seen the girl at the creek, he had been given an insight into her faer’s machinations, feelings, and memories. When she had touched the laegel the night previous, she had solidified this connection between them and thus allowed him to experience acutely her loneliness, sorrow, and fear; this linking was not as robust as when her icy digits had been thrust inside Legolas’ chest, but even now, he could sense her thoughts and sentiments and knew what the baffled tilt of her pale haired head meant.

 _She wonders why Estel lives still. She knows Estel should be dead already._ Had Legolas any lingering doubts about his desperate actions to save his human lover, they were erased in that moment, for he saw then that what Elrohir said earlier was true – had not Legolas imparted his faer’s light into Estel, they would have needed to dig a grave for the Adan this morning – and thus he could no longer be bothered to feel guilty over upsetting his friends since he now knew without doubt he had saved Aragorn’s life, even if only temporarily. Even Elise knew Estel ought to be dead, it seemed, and she was perplexed as to why he was not.

Instinctively desiring to touch his Adan lover and unthinking of whether anyone else would react to their coming into contact, Legolas held his right hand out and behind him, fumbling in the air in search of the Ranger. Whether by similar instinct or by conscious choice, Aragorn did not hesitate to offer his hand to the Prince, and they stood that way – hand in hand – while he considered how to answer her unspoken inquiry. He could feel her inspection of his and Estel’s joined hands; he perceived her juvenile resentment for the two doing what she could not – that is, taking comfort from each other.

 _She knows we are lovers. She watched us at the lake; she likely saw more than any child ought to have seen, since we pleased each other thinking we were entirely alone at our camp. Is she jealous of my love for Estel?_ he wondered, worried now whether she might take out her immature, jealousy-born rage upon Estel. He wondered if her envy might not be the basis for her touching Aragorn at the creek a couple of days ago, to be rid of the human so she could have Legolas to herself. She seemed taken with Legolas, drawn to his faer’s bright light and his differentness, and since the Elf was the only one capable of seeing her, she had latched onto him as might any neglected child to an adult willing to give her a moment’s attention.

A tug at his hand interrupted Legolas’ thoughts. No one was willing to allow the Prince to sacrifice the last of himself for Aragorn, but it was Elladan who had come forward to force Estel away and thus caused the man to break his hold of Legolas’ hand. Aragorn allowed himself to be pulled away, much to Legolas’ disappointment. He heard Kalin’s very loud and very telling sigh of relief when Elladan managed to part the two lovers without mishap, without Estel arguing or Legolas falling over dead. He spared a moment to look at the people around him; the twins returned his gaze with fearful, regretful knowing, Kalin watched Legolas with terrified melancholy, Jakob, Reana, and Wendt only looked on with confusion as to what clandestine undercurrent caused the others to act as they did, though Wendt still remained close to the Prince, his hand still clenched in Legolas’ cloak. Estel’s silver, harried, and suspicious eyes were transfixed upon his Elven lover’s face, seeking from the Silvan the answer to a question he dared not ask aloud – that is, if the laegel had once again used his touch to try to save Aragorn while killing himself in the process.

“Morgoth’s arse, Estel. Are you thick skulled?” the elder twin hissed at his Adan sibling. “Do not touch him.”

A pang of grief shot across the Wood-Elf’s chest, leaving no room inside it for air. Not even the numbness created by Elise’s hands the night prior could numb the agony of his faer’s sorrow to see Elladan and Estel’s distrust of him. In times past, Aragorn would not have been able to feel the Silvan’s grief, although other Elves could usually perceive it, especially so if they were close friends, family, or bonded. Now, however, Estel’s faer was truly tied to Legolas’ faer in a way similar to how the Eldar usually bonded their souls together; Legolas had proven this by imparting his faer’s light to Aragorn. Thus, Estel knew of the Prince’s sorrow at once and struggled to be free to get back to Legolas, to appease the guilty grief the Wood-Elf felt – a grief Aragorn knew he was the cause of by his blatant misgiving for Legolas. Again, Elladan impeded Estel, and another pang of grief gripped his tired heart. He shut his eyes and turned back to Elise.

All this – having Estel’s hand in his, Elladan pulling the man away, Legolas gauging his audience, and Estel trying to get by Elladan to take Legolas’ hand again – took only a few moments. Much like the Ranger, Elise felt her new friend’s anguish, as well, and she responded to this by moving towards where Elladan held back Estel. He could feel her intent, her desire to protect Legolas, to protect the Silvan’s feelings by removing the potential threat Elladan made to Legolas’ happiness, and knew then she could feel his despair and remorse as keenly as he could feel her every emotion.

“No, Elise. Please. All is well,” he said to catch her attention away from Elladan. She stopped at once. He plastered a false smile upon his face and told the girl, “We are heading to your family’s farm. We are off to see your grandfather Emler’s treasures.”

At this, Elise forgot her affront on Legolas’ behalf and seemed to laugh. Never before until this moment had Elise truly looked like the child she had been. Even the embers of her eyes appeared less menacing, but instead twinkled like rubicund starlight in the vapid pallidity of her face. She held her hand out again, beckoning him with the excitement of which only a child is capable. She wanted his companionship while going through her grandfather’s treasure, as she had loved to do whilst still alive. Legolas felt compelled towards her, her excitement becoming his own, her joy bringing him joy, and without second thought, he again lifted his arm to take her hand.

“Greenleaf!” someone yelled at him.

He stepped forward as she stepped forward, their hands coming together just as his and Estel’s had moments ago, but just as he felt the frigid sensation of the nearness of her translucent fingertips, just before her hand slipped into his – through his – and thus just before her touch might have claimed the last spark of life left within him, the grinning, laughing, and beckoning haunt disappeared.

Someone grabbed him from behind, their attempt to keep him from touching Elise having come too late, had she not vanished. The secure arms around his torso were comforting and familiar to him, and he knew it was Estel who held him, who stumbled back with the Wood-Elf in his arms to try to save the Prince from the danger that was no longer there.

“Estel,” Elladan warned the Ranger while struggling to remove the laegel from the Adan’s arms. Kalin added his own efforts in removing his Prince from Aragorn’s embrace, and it was the sentry who managed to pry Estel’s limbs free from the younger Wood-Elf’s body.

“It is alright, brothers,” Elrohir said to stop his twin and the Silvan sentry. The younger twin moved to stand between Aragorn and the Noldo and Silvan, his hands out to stave off the imminent renewal of the physical argument destined to occur between Kalin and Estel. Elrohir pled for the others to understand, “Greenleaf gave me his word he would do it no more. You need not fear it. Stop this.”

Elladan did not listen to his twin, however, and pushed Aragorn farther back and away from the Prince, although it proved no hard feat, for Estel allowed this easily enough. In fact, the Ranger allowed his Elven brother to pull him back several steps until they were with the rest of the group, near the horses, while Elrohir went to Kalin to try to appease his anger for Aragorn by placing a hand upon his shoulder. So wrathful was the sentry that he had both his hands upon the hilt of his sword, as if he might cut down the Ranger should he try to get near his Prince again. Jakob, Reana, and Wendt, who did not understand of what the twins were speaking, watched in wary bewilderment.

Legolas stood alone before his friends, his sentry, his lover, and the blacksmith. Abjectly alone.

It felt like he was lying under the falls of the Bruinen; their judgment, confusion, and worry battered and crashed down upon him like the rapid cascade of the Loudwater. Legolas faltered, his knees buckling under the weight of their assessment. Oddly enough, while his kith and the Rangers only stared at him with a strange expectation, their judgment finding him lacking in sanity or common sense, it was Wendt who once more came to the laegel’s assistance. He tried to steady Legolas, but the Silvan’s exhaustion and the assault of his friends’ mistrust of him was finally too much. The Wood-Elf’s legs gave way. He would have fallen, had not Wendt been there beside him. The stout man took hold of the other of Legolas’ arms in what became a painful grip to hold the Elf up, while the Prince’s legs bore none of his weight.

This broke the silent condemnation of the others. Kalin’s protectiveness of his Prince and Estel’s jealousy to have another Adan touch Legolas caused both to bound forward, anger upon their faces. Only because Elladan and Elrohir were already in place to keep the Ranger and sentry from fighting each other did neither Kalin or Estel make it to throttle the blacksmith, for both were held back by the twins.

 _Stop being a weakling,_ he chastised himself, his voice so very much like his King’s castigating tone that the Prince responded automatically. In gratitude for Wendt’s kindness, Legolas forefended his sentry and lover’s wrath by summoning the last of his determination. He straightened his legs and stood of his own volition, while gently shaking off the blacksmith’s hands. Giving Wendt a brief smile, he spoke before either Kalin or Aragorn could, as he knew what they would likely say to Wendt having grabbed Legolas so familiarly, even though neither of them had tried to aid him, so caught in their censure had they been. He told the smith, “It is not safe for you to travel to the farm alone. Come, you can ride with me on our way. I think Elise is there waiting for us. When we are done, I will help you dig the graves to bury your kin, if I am able.”

Wendt’s thick and dark brows rose high upon his soot-smudged forehead, his surprise at this offer pleasing him, and he nodded his acceptance. Walking with Legolas to Arato, his hand remaining upon the laegel’s arm to catch him should Legolas’ legs give way again, the blacksmith offered the Wood-Elf a boost onto his patiently waiting horse, ere he climbed on behind the Prince. Perhaps it was a bit childish of him to do so, but Legolas was determined to undermine their solicitousness of him by showing his friends that he could abide the blacksmith’s nearness while riding, that he could offer Wendt his protection from Elise rather than being the object of their worry and protectiveness, and truth be told, he was tired of Kalin and Estel’s possessiveness and wanted to ride with neither of them, nor the twins.

Not even when Wendt scooted forward a bit, wedging Legolas’ rear firmly between his muscled thighs, did the Wood-Elf respond. The laegel was too tired, too worn, and too near his death to care. Wendt reached around the Prince, took the reins for himself, and allowed his forearms to lie upon the Silvan’s upper thighs, but even this did not bother Legolas.

“Come,” he told the others, while avoiding looking any of them. He did not want to see the by now recognizable judgment in their eyes – the judgment he had seen so often before, when under the sway of the scar, of the poppy and the periapt, and of his grief. He did not want to see how they all reckoned him mad for having reached out for the very haunt who had cursed him and Estel to die. “Let us be off quickly. We have little time,” he reminded them, and without waiting, nudged Arato with his knee, which caused the dappled steed to take off at a brisk walk.

Behind him, the others mounted rapidly so not to be left behind, none of them asking Legolas of what they had not seen, of what Elise had said or done, and none of them speaking. They were hastened by Legolas’ reminder of their having little time. If the Wood-Elf survived for it, they would beleaguer him with questions and worries over his words and actions, but for now, they needed to finish their task. Legolas urged Arato onward to take the lead once more, since he still wished to keep watch in case Elise returned to them, but unlike before, when he and Elrohir had been alone in the front of the group of riders, this time, Aragorn took care to ride on one side of him, Elrohir now sharing the Adan’s mount, while Kalin rode on the other side of him with Reana riding behind the sentry.

 _They think me a foolish child. They think I cannot control myself, that I am rash and untrustworthy. And even believing that Elise is real, still they look at me as if I were hallucinating all this,_ the Prince rued. His only comfort was that soon his friends and lover would be rid of him and thus, their incessant worry for him soon ended.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have lost all inspiration for writing at the moment. Had this half of the chapter not already been edited, I would have nothing to post this week. So, enjoy what little bit I can offer. I am trying very hard not to throw my hands up in the air and run off screaming. Thanks for reading.

Had he not known Legolas as well as he did and thus had he not known his Silvan lover was not a spiteful person, Aragorn might have thought the Prince invited Wendt to ride with him out of petty vindictiveness. No – Estel knew without doubt that Legolas had asked the blacksmith to ride with them to keep Wendt safe, and he had asked Wendt to ride _specifically with him_ to prove to his friends and lover that he was unafraid of the human and did not need nor appreciate their protectiveness and most especially, Aragorn’s jealousy.

The time it would take them to reach the farm was much shorter mounted than it would be walking, of course – a fact for which Estel felt immense relief. If he had to sit atop his horse and endure this comburent jealousy for much longer, he would end up fired up enough to act the fool. Right now, despite his intention of trying to hide his possessiveness, he kept stealing glances at Wendt and Legolas. His eyes trailed the blacksmith’s heavily muscled arms, which were wrapped around the Prince’s waist, while his brawny forearms rested upon the laegel’s lean thighs to hold Arato’s reins.

 _Wendt might be able to thrash me in a fight, if I tried to kick some respect into him,_ the Ranger pestered himself in mordant displeasure. He shook his head at his own thoughts. _But I imagine Kalin will help me teach this blacksmith manners._ Again, he shook his head to try to dislodge physically the unwelcome jealousy ensnaring his better sense. _Wendt is only riding with Greenleaf. Stop being an idiot, Estel,_ he chastised.

They had only been riding for a few minutes, but in those few minutes, Wendt had opened his mouth to speak at least a dozen times, though he had yet to find the words or the courage to say what he wanted to voice. But now, Wendt’s curiosity needed to be appeased, it seemed, and finally, the blacksmith asked, “How? How can you see Elise?”

Clearly, the question was put to Legolas; the Prince answered, “I honestly do not know. But I am the only one who can see her. When Estel … Aragorn, I mean,” the Wood-Elf corrected, using the name by which the people of the village knew the Ranger rather than the Elven name that his family and those who had known him since he was a child tended to call him. “Aragorn and I were at a lake a day or so walk from here; I felt her presence there but did not see her. Even now, I feel her presence. I know she is near. But I do not see her. I think she waits for us. I think she is excited for us to be searching Emler’s treasures,” the Silvan rambled, sounding more as if he were thinking aloud than answering Wendt’s question, and his voice becoming quieter the longer he spoke.

It should have pleased Estel to see his lover unaffected by Wendt’s nearness. As had Legolas earlier, Aragorn thought now of how last night the Silvan had nearly slit Jakob’s throat when the young Ranger had merely laid his hand upon the Prince’s shoulder in an innocent attempt to gain the Elf’s attention. It should have satisfied Aragorn to see Legolas was not allowing the panic and fear of being mistreated again affect him, but he could see no good in this. Not only was Legolas too eager to ride with Wendt, who had fawned over the Wood-Elf the whole morning during their conversation with the smith, and not only was the blacksmith enjoying the lithe Elf’s proximity entirely too much, but most aggravating to Estel was that he could not touch Legolas himself. And since his lover’s faer was fading into oblivion even as they rode, Aragorn was well aware that Legolas might die at any given moment, and thus perish without Estel having the chance to hold the Silvan a final time, to touch him, to kiss him, or to impart what comfort he might before Legolas’ imminent end came. Truly, these thoughts were what muddled his mind into wrath for Wendt, rather than anything Wendt had done or was doing now, but Aragorn could not help himself but to use the blacksmith as a scapegoat for his anger. He felt Elrohir shift behind him on the horse and was reminded, _Wendt sits no closer to Greenleaf than Elrohir sits to me. And Elrohir even has his hand upon my waist to keep his balance, as does Wendt to Legolas. I am being foolish,_ he decided yet again, though admitting this only soured his mood further.

When Wendt lifted an arm to wrap around Legolas’ svelte middle, his hand now upon the Wood-Elf’s taut belly, the Ranger nearly lost his temper – despite there being two cloaks and a tunic between Wendt’s hand and Legolas’ flesh. Still, it seemed he was not the only one paying attention to the blacksmith’s actions, for in that moment, Aragorn caught sight of how Kalin watched the villager’s every movement. _I don’t believe I have ever seen Kalin so angry,_ he wondered in mild worry. Several months ago, when Legolas was under the sway of Mithfindl’s treacherous imprecations and the sentry had thought Estel to be the cause for his Prince’s suffering rather than Mithfindl, Kalin had looked at Aragorn with nearly the same fury as he looked at Wendt.

Kalin did not hide his dislike nor his wrath for the blacksmith, who by Kalin’s account was taking liberties with his Prince’s person, regardless of whether Legolas minded. _I suppose I am lucky that Kalin has known me since I was a child, for if I had only just met Greenleaf a few years ago and tried to court him properly, Kalin might have murdered me for having the gall even to speak to his Prince,_ he decided with dark humor. Aragorn suddenly wondered how many potential suitors, whether male or female, that the sentry had driven away from his Prince with murderous glares promising bloodshed, all because Kalin found them unworthy of Legolas’ attention. Legolas held great esteem for Kalin’s opinion; Estel found himself contemplating whether he would have been granted the opportunity to spend any time at all with Legolas if Kalin had not liked the human. _Not that he’s overly fond of me now,_ he rued as Kalin caught Aragorn’s gaze and held it, causing the Adan to look away from the unconcealed promise of butchery held within the sentry’s dark blue eyes. Even though Kalin’s wrath was currently targeting Wendt, it made Estel no less uncomfortable to see it. Indeed, he knew how deadly serious the Silvan took his oath to Legolas, for Kalin had nearly slit Estel’s throat once before when believing the Ranger to have harmed his Prince.

“Does she speak? What does she look like?” the blacksmith now asked Legolas, pulling Aragorn from his scattered thoughts.

It took several long moments for the Prince to answer; whether this was because the Silvan needed to think over his answers or if his preoccupation at first prevented him from realizing Wendt spoke to him, or whether Legolas was growing too exhausted to pay attention, did not matter to Estel. As sharp as the blade of his well-honed broadsword, a pang of agony erupted across the man’s chest. He did not wonder from where this sensation derived, for he had felt it twice several minutes ago, when Legolas had stood before his friends and been overwhelmed with sorrow due to his friends’ and lover’s distrust of him. The horse under Estel skittered nervously, causing Aragorn to realize that his apprehensive tension was making his feet jerk in the stirrups and his knees to clench about the horse’s middle, and thus worrying the poor steed with his strange behavior. He watched as Legolas’ hand lifted to press against the middle of his chest, though the Elf stopped himself before doing so, though not before Estel noted this action. Aragorn was consumed with the need to comfort the laegel. Perhaps his Elven brother felt the human’s disquiet or perhaps he feared Estel might reach out for the Prince, for Elrohir grabbed hold of Aragorn’s bicep, giving it a squeeze of comfort or of warning. Whichever was the case, it kept the increasingly fraught man’s hand upon the reins.

“Legolas?” the blacksmith prompted.

From just the casual mention of his Prince’s name, Kalin yet again turned to glare at Wendt. Being that they had no cause to tell the blacksmith of the Silvan’s lineage, Wendt could not be expected to use a more formal greeting for the Prince, but it bothered Kalin no less, it appeared. Besides which, the Prince had told Wendt to call him Legolas, so it ought not to have bothered his sentry. In mirroring of Elrohir’s comforting touch to Aragorn, Reana, who rode behind the sentry, laid her hand upon Kalin’s upper back to calm him. It worked; Kalin wrenched his gaze away from the two atop Arato, reached behind him, and laid his hand over Reana’s hand.

This action caused Estel to smile wanly, despite his aggravation, for this was the first that he realized, _Has Kalin fallen for another Imladrian? I would have thought he would avoid the Noldor after Faelthîr._

When Legolas finally spoke, his words were bare whispers. “She says nothing. I can feel her thoughts, however. I can see into her thoughts. And she into mine.” Without shame over their nosiness, the very much worried Aragorn, Kalin, Reana, and Elrohir observed as Legolas’ shoulders drooped and his head dropped; in response, Wendt slithered his free hand up the Elf’s belly and to the middle of his chest, where he then pressed back to keep Legolas from falling forwards any further. Legolas did not even seem to notice this, but went on, “She looks like her corpse, down to the dirt under her fingernails and the coarseness of her sackcloth dress. But she has no color. She is faded shades of grey. Save for her eyes, which glow like burning coals. And her tears are like molten fire,” the Prince was mumbling. “But her smile is as bright as Anor. And when she smiles, she looks like the child I imagine she was, rather than the specter she has become.”

This description ostensibly tore at Wendt’s heart, from the look upon his face. _He must truly have loved her,_ Aragorn thought of the smith, and found himself feeling sympathy for the man. Everyone in the village had lost friends, family, and neighbors, but Wendt had learnt today that his very own niece was the cause of the devastation of the village’s population. It could not sit lightly upon Wendt’s mind or heart. The Ranger sighed. _We did not even tell him that she touched Greenleaf and I. I wonder if Wendt will feel more shame for his niece being the cause of Legolas’ current condition, since he is infatuated with Greenleaf so greatly._

Although he did not turn around to look, Estel could hear Elladan and Jakob speaking quietly behind them, where they rode a short distance back from Legolas, Wendt, Aragorn, Elrohir, Kalin, and Reana. In the field to their left, the faded yellow fabric comprising the vanes of the windmill fluttered in the breeze. They were almost at the farm, to Estel’s alleviation.

“Are you cold?” the blacksmith suddenly asked the Prince, whose trembling had increased into outright shudders, despite having two cloaks upon him already.

Again, the laegel mumbled something, but this time, it was entirely unintelligible. Generously, the blacksmith loosened his own coat from its ties about his neck, swung it loose from his shoulders, and then swept it over Legolas’ front, such that it covered the Wood-Elf, as well, and housed the warmth from Wendt’s body with the Prince’s chilled form. It also hid the blacksmith’s arms from Aragorn’s view. Estel did not like Wendt touching the Wood-Elf, but he liked even less not being able to see how the man was touching Legolas, especially with the Silvan so distracted that he was growing evermore unaware of his surroundings.

Wendt tried to peer over the Silvan’s shoulder and into the Elf’s face, which placed his cheek alongside Legolas’ ear and neck when he asked worriedly, “Are you well, friend?”

When the Prince did not answer, Wendt looked to Aragorn with concern and question, perchance seeking from Estel some reassurance that the Elf he held in his embrace was not dying in his arms, but Wendt found only rage upon the Ranger’s visage, though the blacksmith clearly could not fathom why. Indeed, seeing Wendt’s hurt confusion quenched Aragorn’s ire somewhat, and he forced himself to look away. _Wendt is not Kane, Sven, or Cort. He is not like them. He is being kind to Greenleaf. And I am treating him unfairly._ When he turned back to the blacksmith to offer him some explanation of Legolas’ condition, Aragorn’s intent to be kinder to Wendt was promptly forgotten, as he found the blacksmith doing something rather odd – the man had his face just a few inches away from Legolas’ fair tresses, just above the Elf’s nape.

Estel knew what scent drew the blacksmith’s nose to that area of the Elf’s head. Bergamot and pines. Aragorn resisted the urge to yank Wendt from the back of Arato only because in doing so Aragorn would topple Legolas off his horse, as well.

And yet, to his shock, Kalin soon began to do this very thing.

Firstly, Kalin forced his horse close to Arato until the two mounts were nearly flank to flank and shoulder to shoulder. The Silvan sentry grabbed hold of Wendt’s cloak, flung it away, and exposed the smith’s arms about his Prince. Aragorn watched in shock, saw his worried astonishment reflected in Reana’s face, and felt Elrohir’s body tense behind him when his Elven brother took notice of Kalin’s actions. Kalin then grabbed hold of Wendt’s arm – the one pressing the center of Legolas’ chest to try to keep him upright – and flung it away, as well, before he grabbed hold of his Prince’s tunic and began to pull Legolas away from Wendt with enough might that the younger Wood-Elf lost his balance entirely and the blacksmith could not counteract Kalin’s forceful yanking to keep Legolas upright, try though Wendt did to find purchase upon the Silvan’s waist to keep Legolas atop Arato.

 _No,_ the Ranger realized with swift terror as he saw that his Elven lover was utterly lifeless and without resistance to Kalin’s tugging, _Kalin is not trying to get Legolas away from Wendt, but trying to keep Greenleaf from falling._

Legolas had given so much of his faer’s light to the human that Estel felt imbued with more energy than ever he had felt before, such that he moved with the rapidity of an Elf rather than that of a man in grabbing hold of Arato’s reins, which had been yanked from Wendt’s hands by Legolas’ body, to pull the steed to a halt. This proved unnecessary, for the horse seemed to know his beloved master was toppling from his back and stopped just as Aragorn seized hold of the reins. He could not see much of what Kalin was doing, being that he was on the opposite side of where the action was occurring, but when the sentry slid from off his borrowed horse, whom Reana had brought to a stop, Kalin took his Prince down to the road with him. Bonelessly, the laegel slithered out of Wendt’s tentative hold and into his sentry’s arms. Aragorn did not hesitate but vaulted from his own mount, leaving Elrohir to try to halt their panicky horse, and then ran in front of Arato to get to where Kalin was now kneeling upon the road with Legolas.

“Brothers! What is it?” came the call from behind them.

Elladan and Jakob were off their own horses, as was Elrohir now, and all three were hastening to where a terrified Kalin held his Prince. Kalin had managed to fall to the ground with Legolas such that the younger Wood-Elf’s body from waist up was lying upon the sentry’s folded legs, for Kalin sat on his heels. Legolas’ head was cradled in the bend of Kalin’s arm. The two Wood-Elves, who Aragorn had often thought looked so much alike that they could be kin and not just kith, were similarly pale, though it was fear causing Kalin’s skin to have turned grey and bloodless, rather than impending death, which was the cause for Legolas’ pallidity.

Still astride the horse, Reana worried to dismount lest the agitated horse upon which she sat should trample the Elves and Ranger at her feet in the tight space between Arato and her own steed. She asked Kalin, “By Ilúvatar’s grace, Kalin. Is he breathing?”

 _Not yet, Greenleaf. Don’t you dare die on me._ The man found himself wondering if earlier he had not pulled Legolas away in time, and thus if Elise had touched the Elf again and hurried the end of his life, or if this was just the result of Legolas having given to Estel the light of his faer. _Do not do this,_ he railed, screaming these words in his head so loudly his ears expected to hear them.

Aragorn knelt beside Kalin and reached out, his own hand shaking in fear of what he might feel – or not feel, as may be the case – and laid it upon his Greenleaf’s exposed, finely made, and suddenly very vulnerable looking neck. Under the cool flesh of the Elf’s throat, he felt the rapid but strong heartbeat Aragorn believed his own heart’s beat depended upon for its continuance. The Ranger sighed greatly and closed his eyes against the sting of grateful tears welling within them. The enmity between the sentry and Ranger was forgotten in that moment, as was Kalin’s desire to keep Aragorn from touching his Prince, and when Kalin looked to Estel for affirmation whether Legolas still lived, Estel nodded to Kalin, thereby causing the sentry to let loose a rushing, ragged exhale of his own. The Ranger and sentry shared between them a brief smile. The abiding, overwhelming love they both felt for the Silvan lying limp upon the ground gave them common purpose, and the comity borne between them for their shared goal of ensuring Legolas’ well-being, happiness, and longevity of life erased all ill will they had felt since this morning, when first they had discovered what the Prince had been doing to save Estel’s life. Perhaps it would rise again, but for now, Aragorn and Kalin were too glad for Legolas’ living.

He felt the need to say it aloud. “He lives,” Estel murmured quietly. For the benefit of his twin brothers, Jakob, and even Wendt, who was now off Arato and gathered around with the others, Aragorn repeated more loudly, “Greenleaf lives still. His heartbeat is strong.”

“Legolas,” the Silvan sentry implored while pushing ineffectually at the blond hair having fallen across his Prince’s face. It was fruitless, as the breeze kept blowing Legolas’ hair back over his features, and the fall of buttery tresses did not hide the deathly stillness of the laegel’s face, his blue tinged lips, or the translucency of his delicate eyelids, nor the strange vacancy of Legolas’ features. The Wood-Elf was not asleep but unconscious. “Wake up, please, my Prince.” His face appearing feral as he searched the faces of those around him for some sign of what to do to aid his charge, Kalin begged for someone to tell him, “What do we do?”

“Prince?” he heard Wendt question softly, but did not care to respond. It mattered little for Wendt to know Legolas was royalty, especially if they were now watching the Silvan die.

 _You cannot leave me, Greenleaf,_ he told the Silvan Elf, fully expecting for Legolas to be able to hear his thoughts.

Aragorn took hold of Legolas’ forearm, wrapped both hands around the deathly still Elf’s limb, and concentrated on the heartbeat moving the scant flesh over the inside of Legolas’ wrist. He willed Legolas’ heartbeat to continue, as if by his resolve alone he might accomplish such a thing. Briefly, the Ranger wondered if he might be able to do as Legolas had done – that is, bequeath to the Elf the light of his faer, the light that Aragorn had been given by Legolas without his desiring it. But he discarded this notion. There was no guarantee his doing such a thing was feasible, but even if it were, there was then no guarantee it would be enough to allow the Wood-Elf to live. Should he do it, he might only ensure his own demise, and thus not be able to help the others in finding and severing the connection between Elise and the corporeal world. So instead, Estel prayed to Eru, to Manwë, to Nienna – running through the entire roll of Valar before returning to the Creator again in his pleas. He turned Legolas’ hand over, brought it to his mouth, and planted a kiss upon the calloused flesh of his lover’s palm ere he moved his attention upward and gave another loving buss upon the distressed heartbeat of the Wood-Elf’s inner wrist. He let his mouth linger here, feeling with his lips the quivering evidence that Legolas still lived.

“Estel?” one of the twins inquired, pulling the human back to the present. Elladan and Elrohir had both heard their Adan brother’s proclamation of Legolas being alive, but they now wanted an explanation for why he was lying motionless upon the ground, since they could not yet reach the Wood-Elf with Kalin and Aragorn crowded around him.

He answered with more hope than fact, “I think our Greenleaf is merely exhausted.”

Having lost patience waiting for either their brother or the sentry to move, Elladan roughly pushed past Aragorn while Elrohir did the same to Kalin so they could tend Legolas. Without consulting with the Prince’s sentry – for the twins would not be dissuaded from practicing the art of healing upon Legolas, even should it all be for naught – Elladan and Elrohir bustled Legolas out of Kalin’s arms and between them carried their friend to the side of the path, where the tall grasses would make for a softer place to lay the Prince than the flagstones of the road. Aragorn remained knelt on the ground, facing Kalin as he had before, though now without Legolas between them. He saw in the sentry’s pale, teary eyes the same cautious relief he felt.

“He needs rest,” he told Kalin, wishing to ease the panic he saw in the Wood-Elf.

Kalin nodded, climbed to his feet, and offered his hand out to Aragorn, who took it for help in rising to his feet. Less than an hour ago, the sentry and Ranger had been on the verge of a brawl, but now, they offered each other comfort. The Silvan wordlessly gripped Estel’s arm at the elbow and together they walked to where the twins hovered over Legolas.

“His heartbeat is fast but strong,” Elladan diagnosed upon seeing his brother and the sentry standing over him, “I agree with you, Estel. I think Greenleaf is only exhausted.”

“Yes. I don’t think we will lose him. Not just yet,” Elrohir added in reluctance to mention that fact, but saying it nonetheless, for it would do none of them any good to get their hopes up. Indeed, the younger Noldo fussed with Legolas’ borrowed cloak – Elrohir’s cloak – by draping it more fully over the Prince, and then looked to his twin as he commented, “Do you think he will waken again? Before his end, I mean.”

 _I had not thought of that. Has he fallen into exhausted insentience never to wake?_ the man worried. He felt Kalin’s hand tighten around his arm.

“I do not know. But if he does not, we will need to be very cautious when we search through Elise’s house so that we do not end up walking right into her.” Elladan had taken off his cloak while speaking; he now rolled up the cloth and lifted Legolas’ head to place upon it. The elder twin gave his younger twin a glance lasting no more than a moment, but Estel could tell his brothers were sussing out something between them, something would he would not wish to hear. A moment later, after Elrohir nodded without either twin having spoken aloud, Elladan rose to his feet and told Aragorn, “You, Jakob, and Wendt should go back to the village. Take Greenleaf with you.”

“With Legolas unconscious, there will be no warning of Elise now. You will not live through being touched by her again, nor will Wendt. If one of us happens upon her,” Elrohir explained, indicating the other Elves around him, “we will not die immediately, which will give us time to finish our search.” The younger Noldo rose to his feet, as well, such that the three brothers and Silvan sentry all stood around the Woodland Prince, while Reana, Wendt, and Jakob were lingering by the horses in indecisive concern.

Aragorn immediately tried to find fault with their idea but could think of none. To his surprise, Kalin spoke up against this idea, telling the twins, “If the Edain can be convinced to return to the village for their safety, fine, but my Prince stays with me, and I am not going back until our task is done. If you are worried Legolas will be in the way, then I will take care of him. He is not leaving my sight again. Perhaps not ever. And especially not until he is cured.”

 _Or buried,_ the Ranger’s traitorous mind supplied. He winced at his own thoughts. _No, I will not let Greenleaf die._

“Kalin. You know that is not what we meant,” Elladan argued back. He looked down to Legolas, which caused them all to peer down at the Prince. Normally, Legolas appeared as serene as an Elfling whilst asleep; now, he appeared little different, except that his jaw hung slack and his neck was somewhat twisted in what must have been an uncomfortable position – to Aragorn, these were signs the Elf was entirely unaware of his own body and surroundings, for if Legolas were merely asleep, he would have moved to rectify both. “I know you are worried and angry, muindor,” the elder Noldo called Kalin, whom they had known for as long as they had Legolas, and had grown to love and respect for his care of Legolas, but also because of his typically honorable, levelheaded disposition, “but do not doubt our love for Greenleaf because of it. Never would we think of Greenleaf as a burden.”

The Silvan sentry said nothing in response, but he did hang his head and look away, his shame for his words exacerbating his concern, such that he could not dispute Elladan’s claim.

“I suppose Greenleaf would rather be out in nature, anyway,” Elrohir told his twin, though he looked to Aragorn and Kalin while he spoke. Elrohir was right, of course. Legolas, should he die, would rather die in the grass beside this road rather than in the stuffy ensconcement of the schoolhouse. “It might be better for his faer if he remains with us, besides. If he wakes, he will want us near – especially Estel. And if he does not, then perhaps he will find our presence comforting, nonetheless.”

Having his brothers speak of the Wood-Elf with such certainty of his looming death was disheartening to the Ranger. A creeping guilt crawled up his spine, his readiness to accept the blame for Legolas’ condition making him berate himself, _Had I not insisted we come this way, or into the wilds at all, or had I not mentioned this village. Had I not let him go out with Jakob last night. If I had known he was giving his life to me last night and this morning…_ he rued, though such thoughts were useless and would have earned him an argument from Legolas should the Prince know of them.

Having stood back from the others, Wendt now came forward to stand with the Noldor, sentry, and Estel, his confusion over what had just occurred and his misunderstanding of Kalin and Aragorn’s ire for him causing him to seek answers. “Perhaps you feel it is not of my concern, but in the very short time I’ve known him, Legolas has earned my respect with his kindness to Elise – and to her corpse. And I do not understand what is happening here. Any of it. What’s wrong with him?”

“Elise touched him. She touched us both. Legolas and I will die because of it, more than likely,” Aragorn told the blacksmith bluntly. It pleased some dark and petty part of him to see how Wendt turned away from Estel, remorse flushing the man’s cheeks under the rich darkness of his prominent cheekbones; and then, Aragorn promptly felt his own shame for taking any delight in Wendt’s guilt, for it was not the blacksmith’s fault his niece was terrorizing the village. Estel took a deep breath, rubbed his whiskered chin, and tried to calm himself. “We need to look through the items in the cellar of the house. We hope there might be some tangible cause for Elise’s remaining after her death. If we find it, we can try to destroy the connection between her and it, and hopefully end her killing of the villagers.”

“And what of Legolas? Will that help him?” the blacksmith asked. To Aragorn’s half-amused vexation, yes, Wendt did indeed look very much distressed to hear his niece was the reason behind Legolas’ current state – just as Aragorn had wondered if Wendt might only a short while ago. Before the Ranger could get too worked up over Wendt not even mentioning Elise’s effect upon him, also, Wendt added belatedly, “And you, I mean. Will being rid of her aid the both of you?”

Elrohir answered for Aragorn, telling Wendt, “We do not know if it will save them, but we will find out. She must be released from the bond keeping her here rather than allowing her to remain, even if somehow she never touched another person to kill them. She must move on. You realize she does not belong here, don’t you?” he wondered of Wendt.

It had not occurred to the Ranger that having just learnt his niece was not quite dead but lingering as a bodiless spirit in the physical world, Wendt may resist their intention to remove her paltry, persistent existence. But before Elrohir even finished speaking, Wendt was nodding his concurrence.

“Then I am going, as well,” Wendt said. He crossed his brawny arms over his chest. “She is my niece. The house is mine now, I suppose, as is everything in it, which makes me responsible for whatever item is within that you might seek. But more importantly, if you look for something Elise may have taken from Emler’s belongings, then you may not find it in the house at all. Like I told you, she was wont to hide bits of the ‘treasure’ at the creek. You will waste time looking for what she might have hidden there, while I know just where she liked to hide her stolen treasures on the creek’s bank.”

The twins looked to each other in helplessness, for no one was willing to return to the village, it seemed. In the end, Estel did not even need to argue against his going back. If Kalin refused to allow his Prince to leave his sight and Wendt refused to go back to the village then there would be no convincing Estel to go, they knew. Besides, they would not want their Adan brother to travel back to the village alone and needed all the help they could get, so did not want Reana to leave, and while Jakob had said nothing thus far, Aragorn knew the man would stay to be of aid no matter the potential threat to his own life. After a few moments of the twins staring at each other silently, Elrohir nodded to his other half again and Elladan sighed as he knelt back down to gather Legolas in his arms. With ease, the Noldo picked up the younger Elf.

“Then that’s all settled,” Jakob said with his interminable good cheer. He pushed at Wendt’s arm to get him moving, saying, “Come. You can ride with me now,” ere he began herding the others closer to the horses. “Kalin will want his Prince to ride with him, I’m sure. Let’s get a move on.”

Kalin did not need to be told twice, and ere the others had even begun walking back to the horses, the sentry was already climbing atop Arato. He immediately held his arms out in wait for Elladan and Elrohir to hand his Prince up to him. While Aragorn would have liked to be the one to hold Legolas for the short remainder of their trip, he did not argue, since he could at least be pacified that Wendt would not be riding with Legolas this time. He climbed atop his borrowed horse and helped Elrohir to climb on behind him. Wendt sat behind Jakob, Reana rode her and Kalin’s mount alone now, and Elladan nudged her horse out of the way so he could place his horse on the side opposite of Aragorn and Elrohir, such that the three brothers were riding on either side of Legolas and Kalin. They would be at ready should Kalin’s hold falter and the Prince begin to fall, but Aragorn did not fear such a thing. If Legolas began to slide out of his sentry’s hold, the devoted sentry would tumble to the ground to break his Prince’s fall with his own body. 

They had kept the horses at a brisk walk on their way so far, but now, Kalin prompted Arato into a gallop. The dappled mount took off at a full run, which left the others’ horses, who were more accustomed to pulling carts and plows, struggling to catch up.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was especially hard to write. I couldn't find a way to break it up so it is a bit longer than normal. Thanks for reading. Enjoy.

Someone was trying to wake him with gentle taps to the side of his face. When the person spoke his name, Legolas knew it to be Kalin. So tired was he that the Silvan rolled his head away from his sentry so he might continue to sleep, but Kalin would not be avoided. His mind was blank. He did not yet recall where or why or how or what, but only knew he was so tired he wished merely to fall back into the deep sleep from which his sentry seemed determined to pull him.

In a voice attempting levity, which failed because of the obvious perturbation in the sentry’s otherwise spirited voice, Kalin ordered, “I know you are not sleeping, lazy Prince of mine. Wake up, please, Legolas. Now is not the time for your sluggardliness.”

Reflexively, feebly, the Prince smiled to hear Kalin’s gibe, and was unaware at how this meek smile brought stinging tears of relieved joy to his fraught sentry’s eyes. Still, however, he could not summon the energy to try to do as Kalin bid. He pushed his face farther into what he thought to be the pillow under his head, though it was the tunic over his sentry’s belly into which he burrowed his nose.

When a young Elfling, Legolas had often been awoken from his reverie by Kalin, who gladly had ever taken on the role of being his Prince’s keeper, and not just his guard. For a brief, brilliantly aching moment, Legolas expected to open his tired eyes to find himself in his bedchamber at home with the dawn light coming from the small, round, vine covered windows set in the wall, to view the familiar whitewashed ceiling over his head and to see surrounding him in the room the furnishings once belonging to his sweet and loving mother. But something hurt inside of him. It was not a bodily injury, exactly, but it pained him physically nonetheless, which is why his first coherent thought was, _What have I done this time to upset Ada? I cannot remember._ He wondered at the extent of the penance he had paid for whatever misdeed he had committed. That Kalin was worried confirmed this supposition, while also disquieting him at the supposition of being seriously injured, which given just how upset Kalin sounded to be, seemed very likely to the younger Elf. The sleep-addled Prince might have fallen back into reverie wholly believing himself to be a child again, abed after being ‘disciplined’ by his father, except at that moment, he heard other voices talking amongst themselves, though they spoke of him.

_Elladan, Elrohir. And Estel,_ he recognized. _My Estel._ The Prince managed to dredge up the knowledge of where he was and what had happened, and then immediately wished he had not. _I am dying. And Estel will die after me, if I do not get up to see this finished._

He fought to look at Kalin, but his lids fluttered and his eyes would only roll around in his head, showing the concerned people around him the whites of them but not the cerulean they longed to see. He tried to respond to Kalin’s taunt of calling him lazy, but his tongue felt stuck to the inside of his mouth, while his teeth were chattering noisily – which was not something the Elf could recall ever experiencing before, though he had seen Estel do it when cold or feverish. In the end and in hopes of appeasing his friends, Legolas managed another faint curl of his lips, the barest hint of a smile, for his well beyond alarmed spectators. What he had thought to be his bed under him moved suddenly, for Kalin budged and thus shifted his Prince, whose upper torso was laid upon Kalin’s thighs as he knelt, while the younger Elf’s head was held dotingly in the crook of Kalin’s arm. At some point, they had removed his quiver and bow, though his long knife still hung in its sheath at his waist. The ignominy of this meek position washed over him and at once, Legolas tried to roll his head away from where he had been burrowing it against his sentry’s belly. _This may not be laziness, but Kalin is right, and I am lazy all the same for lying here when the others are about the task of trying to spare the villagers more misery and loss… and more pressingly, trying to save Estel’s life._

“Please, Greenleaf. Waken,” Elrohir or Elladan asked of him. “We need you to drink something, brother.”

“If he is awake enough to grin at Kalin’s teasing, then he is awake enough to drink. Give it to him,” the other twin reasoned, and soon thereafter, the open end of a glass flask was pressed to his lips.

Trusting his friends unconditionally, Legolas drank without questioning what he was imbibing. _Miruvor,_ he knew at once, for he recognized the taste easily enough. _It is good they brought it with them. With the aid of miruvor, I may be able to last long enough to be of some use._ When the flask of cordial was pulled away, the Prince licked his lips to catch the remaining sweetness lingering thereon. He was thirsty and hungry. Other than the tea he had drank that morning before they set out for the farm, Legolas had not had much else to eat or drink since he and Estel shared cured meat and water before reaching the village the day before. His face crumpled into a frown of concentration. He wanted water but could not speak to tell anyone. For some reason, it pestered the Prince to think he might die thirsty, though it seemed clear he would die all the same.

A gentle hand began playing along his brow. Instinctively, he turned his face towards the touch, as he knew it to be Estel’s rough fingertips tracing his dark amber eyebrows, the furrow of deliberation upon his normally unlined forehead, and the Wood-Elf’s high cheekbones. Aragorn asked the twins, “Is that enough? More wouldn’t hurt him, would it?”

They must have decided Estel was right though they said nothing aloud. So again, the cool glass rim of the flask was pressed to his lips and the Wood-Elf drank more, this time with much eagerness, for while it was not water, the miruvor wetted his desiccated mouth and throat. When last he had consumed the rejuvenating cordial, Legolas had been in a similar state of exhaustion; the miruvor had worked to invigorate him enough to carry the injured and feverish Adan out of the woods and to the Bruinen. He only hoped that it would work similarly this time and for much the same reason – to try to save Estel.

“He no longer looks as pale,” the Prince heard Wendt comment. Even the blacksmith, who had known Legolas for less than half a day, sounded worried for the Elf’s welfare. “What is that you are giving him? Whisky?”

“No, it is a liquor made by my foster father’s people in Rivendell, used to rejuvenate and abet recuperation,” Estel replied. Earlier, while riding with Wendt, the Ranger had glared meanly at the blacksmith; now, though, he spoke with tolerant kindness. Legolas was glad of it. He wished to endure no more of his lover’s possessiveness. It reminded the Silvan too much of his father, who kept the Prince on a short leash to control him by controlling with whom the Prince associated. Indeed, save for Elrond’s family, Legolas had few friends outside Mirkwood due to his father’s belligerence in the matter and because of Thranduil’s general distrust of anyone who was not of the Greenwood. He listened to his lover’s husky, beleaguered voice as Aragorn put aside his dislike of Wendt to explain patiently, “It is an Elven cordial, its ingredients and making known only to the Eldar. It is an emulation of the miruvórë of the Valar.”

Whether Wendt understood any of this, Legolas could not ascertain. He could only hear their conversation, being that he could not seem to force his eyes open. The miruvor was working, however, for Legolas already felt vigor returning to his limbs and focus sharpening his mind. The effects of the cordial were not long lasting and would have no hope of saving him, but if it kept him alive enough to do as he hoped – to aid Aragorn and the village – then the Silvan would be grateful.

Wendt brought up this very point, asking mildly, “It will only prolong his life, then? It will not help to save it?”

One of the twins answered, “No. It will not prolong his life, nor save it. It will only allow him to get up and move about for the time he has left.”

The other twin added, “And from the looks of him, our Greenleaf will not last much longer. He has spent too much of his faer’s light to save Estel. If he lives to see the sunrise on the morrow, I will be joyous, but astounded.”

Placing a hand upon each of the Elf’s cheeks, Aragorn cupped the Silvan’s face and swept his thumbs over Legolas’ cheekbones. Not caring if they were all watching, the Prince turned his head enough so that his mouth laid under one of the man’s palms, and pressed his lips against it. This earned him a ragged sigh from Aragorn, who had begun to doubt whether the Elf was aware of their presence at all; Estel was pleased his doubts were unfounded. As the Ranger bent low, he blocked the light from the Elf’s visage; the sunlight filtering redly through Legolas’ eyelids dimmed into blackness, just before he felt the whiskers on Estel’s face begin to prickle against his forehead.

“I am here, meleth nin,” Aragorn told Legolas ere he pressed a chaste buss upon the laegel’s knitted brow, then each of the Elf’s closed eyes, before he laid his bearded cheek against Legolas’ smooth one to whisper in his ear, “Stay here with me. Do not give in, Greenleaf. There is still time to end this hold Elise has over us, and none of us will rest until we have tried every avenue available to save you. Just hold on, meleth nin.”

_They are not pulling him away from me,_ the Wood-Elf suddenly wondered of Aragorn’s touch. He had thought he might die without being given another chance to enjoy the warmth of the man’s skin, the intimacy of a simple, innocent caress from his lover, or the mere proximity between himself and the Ranger. _Whatever happened while I was unconscious, perhaps they no longer distrust me. Or perhaps they think I am too close to death for it to matter._

Elladan – Legolas felt sure it was Elladan who spoke, though he was having trouble telling the twins’ similar voices apart right now – told those around him, “As you say, Estel, we will do what we can, so come. Let us search the cellar. You will stay here with Legolas, won’t you?” the elder twin asked of someone, who the Prince guessed to be Kalin, as he knew his sentry would refuse to leave him.

And he was right, for Kalin answered as though Elladan had tried to make him leave rather than ask him to stay, saying firmly, “I will not leave my Prince.”

A feminine voice inquired, “What of Elise? She could be here right now and one of us could walk right into her without our knowing.”

He had forgotten Reana was with them. _Did I pass out while riding? How long have I been asleep or unconscious?_ he speculated, humiliation to be so weak in front of strangers and his friends causing his pale skin to flush, though the miruvor was facilitating this ruddiness, too, for its rejuvenescence was mounting within him, and with the advent of the cordial’s healing properties, his shivering blessedly began to subside, though the chill remained. The import of Reana’s question hit him, causing the Wood-Elf’s drifting mind to center upon her intimation, _We are at the farm already? Elise may be here. I will not lie about while they put themselves in danger. Up, Legolas,_ he ordered himself. _Kalin is right. Now is not the time for sluggardliness._

Estel lingered a moment more with his face pressed against Legolas’ cheek. He heard his beloved Ranger draw in a slow, deliberate breath, as one might to ease one’s anxiety, but Aragorn did this through his nose, and Legolas knew he was inhaling the Elf’s scent. Perhaps Aragorn thought that Legolas did not know of his penchant for smelling the Wood-Elf, but Legolas was very much aware of it and found it endearing. Estel reminded the Silvan, “Kalin will be here beside you and I will return soon enough.” Aragorn whispered directly into the Prince’s ear, “Do not leave me. Not if you can help it.” The man paused a moment and then added, “I love you, Greenleaf.”

_And I love you, Estel,_ he wished he could reply, though he knew without doubt that Aragorn did not need to hear these words for reassurance of Legolas’ feelings for him.

Then, with a rustle of cloth and the telltale squeak of his leathers, the Ranger released the Prince and rose to go with his brothers. _No,_ he wanted to shout to Aragorn and the others. Kalin adjusted his hold of Legolas, hefting the younger Silvan again so the Prince was nearly sitting upright with his back against Kalin’s front and his head now resting just under his sentry’s chin. His fear for his friends became a greater impetus for him to fight against the murkiness of his mind and the sluggishness of his body. With great effort, Legolas opened his eyes entirely. Kalin was peering down at him with worry, though once he saw his Prince had finally managed this small feat, the sentry beamed with innocently pure pleasure. It didn’t take much to make Kalin happy, for as a Silvan Elf and as did Legolas, Kalin took pleasure in the simple aspects of life, but never was the sentry happier than when he was appeased that his Prince was well – or as well as could be expected for the nonce.

“Wait,” Legolas mumbled, though he had intended to call out to the twins, Reana, Jakob, Wendt, and Estel. He rolled his head against his sentry’s arm to try to locate them, but the brightness of the midday sun blinded him and the laegel quickly shut his eyes. Again, he rasped out, “Wait. Estel.”

Thinking that his charge had not heard what was said by Aragorn moments ago, or perhaps just to remind Legolas, Kalin repeated what Estel had told Legolas, “I am right here, my Prince, and Estel has promised to come back often to check on you. Stay still. Relax. Rest, please.”

But the Prince could not do as asked. His flagging energy rebounding because of the miruvor, Legolas struggled to sit up properly. This much, at least, his sentry aided him in doing, though when Legolas tried to crawl off his guard to his knees, to rise to follow the others so he could be of aid, Kalin kept his Prince from doing so, much to the younger Silvan’s aggravation. He could barely muster the energy to try to rise the first time, much less to tussle against Kalin’s slight hold of his shoulders. Besides just being bone tired, Legolas was weary of his sentry’s disrespect of him. The sentry had forgotten his place. Legolas was not usually one to use his position as Prince to get his way, for in truth he rarely needed to remind his fellow Silvan to respect him due to his lineage, but Legolas could abide Kalin’s treatment of him no more.

To stop the laegel, Kalin pulled Legolas to him, such that once more, the Prince’s back was leaning against his sentry’s chest. The younger Elf wrenched his shoulders out of Kalin’s hold, though in doing so, he unbalanced himself and fell onto his side upon the grass of the yard. With a hissing expletive, Kalin scrambled to pick his Prince up from the ground, but first tried to roll him over onto his back.

Legolas railed at Kalin, “Leave me be.”

The sentry did not obey immediately. In fact, he held a hand flat against his charge’s chest, which was all it took to stop the weakened Prince from rising again. To Legolas’ dismay, though he could see Kalin’s hand upon his chest, he could not feel it at all, for Kalin placed his hand just where Elise had touched the Prince and the flesh there was insensate. His sentry balked, “No. You need to rest.”

“Let go of me, Kalin… now,” he growled in a low and broken voice. Through squinting eyes, the Prince saw that his sentry would not agree, and since Legolas had not the strength to continue this quarrel, he tamped down his irritation and resorted to beseeching, “Please. She is here. Tell them to come back, Kalin. Please.”

His eyes growing wide, Kalin nodded. The others, who had not seen the Prince and sentry’s actions and thus were unaware of the danger, were deep in conference at the gate to the yard of the small cottage. Kalin called out to them, “Hold a moment!”

Kalin’s fearful exclamation had the group racing back to him. They feared Legolas was dying just then, and no one wanted to be absent for the moment, as they wanted to offer the Prince any comfort they might – Estel most especially. But upon sprinting the short distance back to Kalin and Legolas, they found instead that Legolas was sitting upright and fighting against Kalin’s attempt to keep him from standing.

_Estel will not deny me,_ he knew, and so asked his Ranger rather than anyone else, “Help me to stand, Estel, please. I need to make certain it is safe for everyone.”

To his despairing disappointment, Aragorn looked to Kalin and his twin brothers for counsel on the matter. Legolas shut his eyes and swallowed thickly. But suddenly, a hand grasped one of his and then fumbled for the other. _Thank you, Eru, for letting Estel see sense,_ he told himself, only to open his aching eyes to find Wendt crouched beside him. He would not pass up the help, even if it did not come from the one to whom he had turned for it. Wendt pulled Legolas into standing, much to Kalin’s aggravation, the others’ worry, and Estel’s chagrined jealousy. When the benevolent blacksmith tried to twist an arm around the laegel’s waist to keep him steady, Aragorn intervened. He slid his own limb around the Prince’s middle without explanation. Eagerly, Legolas welcomed the help, the pleasantly heavy sensation of Aragorn’s forearm resting at the small of his back, and the familiarity of the fingers curled around his hipbone for grip. To his relief, Wendt smiled at Estel and Legolas and did not seem upset at having his offer of aid shunned by the Ranger. But then, despite Wendt’s incessant ogling and undue interest in Legolas all morning, the blacksmith likely now realized Estel had claimed the Wood-Elf as his mate, being that Wendt must have heard and seen Aragorn’s more than platonic affection.

“Do you see her, then, Greenleaf?” Elladan asked. The twins crowded around the Elf and Ranger, while the exasperated sentry climbed from the ground once he realized his Prince would not be deterred from his course. Elladan absently reached out to pull free a piece of straw from the Silvan’s golden hair. “Is she here in the yard?”

The Noldo’s question made the others stare around them, as if they might see Elise, though all of them knew they could not. Elrohir brushed at Legolas’ tunic, sweeping off bits of dry leaves. They could do nothing for the Prince, Legolas knew, and so they did what they could, even if it was only small tokens of affection rather than attempts to halt the death they knew they could not circumvent. Elrohir glanced towards the house, from where the overwhelming scent of decaying flesh could be smelt despite the closed shutters and door.

Without giving Legolas the chance to answer his twin’s query, Elrohir added his own, saying, “Do you feel well enough to be on the lookout for her? It would do us great good to keep her within your sight, if it will not tax you too much.”

“I do not see her out here,” he began, coughed barkingly into his tunic’s sleeve, and then wheezed a breath back into his overwhelmed body.

Estel’s hold of Legolas’ waist became wincingly tight. The Silvan’s throat felt raw and coated in sand. Just when he thought he could speak again – or enough so to ask for water, at least – the laegel barked another harsh cough, his whole body doubling over from the effort. Both twins had their hands upon him to keep him upright. When he was finally able to draw in a succoring breath, he thought again to ask for a drink, but fortuitously, Jakob held out a waterskin with the cork top already removed. Without examining what it was, the Prince drank heavily from the skin and was surprised to find it held undiluted, stout wine rather than water. He did not care. The blood red liquid ran down his chin; it did not have time to splatter upon his cloak, for Aragorn wiped it clean with the back of his hand ere he licked his hand clean with a smile.

Had they been alone, the Ranger would likely have licked the wine directly off the Elf’s chin just to make Legolas laugh. No one else would have understood the allusion that Aragorn’s action made to a very private memory held between the Elf and Ranger. One night during their peaceful stay at the lake, Legolas had been pleasing the handsome human. He loved to watch Estel writhe and groan while he had the man’s shaft in his mouth. After many long, torturously gratifying moments in which Aragorn had begun to thrust upwards into the Silvan’s eager orifice, Estel had finally reached his peak. His seed had run a rivulet from between Legolas’ lust swollen lips, but before the smiling Wood-Elf could wipe it away, Aragorn had sat up and licked his own seed from the Prince’s lips and chin, ere claiming the Elf’s mouth in thorough possession.

_Even with both of us on the brink of death, Estel’s mind is filled with libidinous thoughts,_ the Prince decided as he smiled back at Estel in amusement at the man’s impish, suggestive grin.

The now faintly blushing Prince handed the wine back to Jakob with a ‘thank you’ before he cleared his throat, forced his attention back to the matter at hand, and then explained to his identical Noldorin friends, “I think Elise is in the house – in the cellar or the main room, perhaps. She is waiting. Let me speak to her first. I am of little other use, but I can distract her so you can search without fear. Or mayhap, I can try to glean more information from her to direct your search.”

This was what they had intended from the start. It was why no one had argued against Legolas’ coming with them, when it had been clear at the schoolhouse that the Prince was too weak to continue on for much longer. And yet, now since Elladan and Elrohir had seen for themselves how the haunt could incite Legolas into reaching out to her – despite the Prince knowing her touch would snuff out the light of his faer – neither twin wanted to place the Wood-Elf in a position where he might act unthinkingly again. But they had little choice. They did not want for Legolas to die sooner, but nor did they want for anyone else to die. Reluctantly, the twins nodded as one. Kalin, on the other hand, shifted in aggravation, for he knew he would not be able to stop his Prince from doing as he wished; moreover, now that Legolas had the twins’ blessing for it, Kalin would not go against the Noldorin Lords as it meant he would be arguing against all three of them.

With Aragorn supporting much of the Elf’s weight, Legolas made it across the yard, up the slab steps, and onto the porch. The stoop was tiny and there was barely enough room for both Estel and Legolas to stand upon it together, but this did not stop Kalin from climbing up to the final step, as well, since he would not leave his Prince by choice. Legolas pushed open the small house’s front door. The stench of the bodies decaying within was enough to make the Prince’s eyes water, while he reeled a bit from how overpowering the smell was. In the darkness, Legolas saw vague movement, felt Elise’s presence more keenly, and knew she was within the house.

Shuffling around until he faced the others, who were standing just off the porch at the bottom of the steps or further out in the yard, all of them staring at the laegel in anticipation of hearing what he found, the Wood-Elf instructed of them, “Do not follow me. Remain out here.”

To his consternation, Kalin and Aragorn looked to each other, deciding between them, it seemed to Legolas, as to who would follow Legolas inside the house, regardless of his declared wish that they not do so. When Estel inclined his head slightly to Kalin in silent acquiescence to the sentry’s adamancy in protecting his Prince, the decision was made, and the sentry stepped forward. The elder Silvan told the younger, “I am coming with you.”

_I should not be surprised. I reached for Elise twice when last I saw her._ He wanted to argue against Kalin’s joining him, but Legolas decided it best to choose his battles, so to speak, and thus, he unwillingly agreed with a simple nod. _Better Kalin than Estel, I suppose. At least if she touches Kalin, there will still be time to save Kalin’s life by finding the object. Estel could not withstand her touch again, even with the extra energy I have given his soul from mine._

“Kalin,” the Ranger intoned quietly. When the sentry stopped to listen, Legolas tried to walk within on his own, only for Kalin to reach out, seize his Prince’s arm, and yank the laegel to a halt – all of which he managed with ease, and all without even sparing his Prince a glance. Aragorn gave Legolas a tight, supplicatory smile, asking for his lover’s forgiveness ere he had even offended and causing the Elf to wonder why; that is, until he instructed Kalin, “Remember: she holds sway over your Prince’s mind, just like a wight is capable of doing. Keep him from reaching out to her, Kalin. _Please_ ,” Estel begged of the guard, “keep him out of her reach. And keep Greenleaf safe.”

He felt the blood blossoming up his neck and straight to the tips of his pointed ears. He stood there with the Ranger and sentry, able to hear their conversation, obviously, and yet they spoke of him as if he were a dimwit or a child. Only Estel’s ostensible discomfort and chagrin to be doing so kept the Prince’s lips sealed from castigating the man. He distracted himself by watching the others, who were milling about near the fence’s gate and speaking of how best to go about their task, just as they had been doing ere he interrupted them a short time ago. From what he overheard, the twins were deciding it would be best to build a bonfire and burn the whole lot of ‘treasures’ in the cellar, while anything made of inflammable materials would be smashed to bits and thrown on the fire anyway.

“With my life, Estel. You know I will do anything required to keep him safe,” Kalin agreed to Aragorn’s instruction, doing so without difficulty given that the Silvan had all intentions of ensuring his Prince’s well-being for this risky task. “Keep everyone together and out in the yard until we have determined where the haunt is.”

Aragorn nodded at Kalin but his gaze was for Legolas only. The human lifted a hand, laid it upon Legolas’ shoulder, and then decided this touch was too impersonal; and so, instead, Estel stepped forward, pressed his forehead against the Prince’s forehead briefly, ere he replaced his forehead with his lips to press a quick buss upon his lover’s smooth brow. Before the Ranger could change his mind about accompanying the Silvan into the house, Estel hurried to step off the stoop and away from the two Elves. He went back to where the others stood, though again, his regard lingered upon Legolas.

“Come, Kalin,” he said to his sentry.

Legolas crossed the threshold of the small house. He paused to allow his overly sensitive eyes the time to adjust to the house’s dimness after being in the bright light of Anor outside. Once he could discern more than hazy shadows, Legolas saw Elise. The girl sat upon the tattered, well-used, and well-worn bear rug in front of the hearth at the opposite end of the main room. Her monochrome features broke out into a titanic smile when she saw Legolas’ approach, though upon seeing Kalin following the Prince, Elise’s childishly gleeful grin wavered a bit. Nothing could dampen her good spirits to have her new friend in her house to play, however, and she beckoned him nearer with a wave of her hand. The sunlight from the open door cast a wide swath of illumination in the middle of the room, but it seemed to fade ere reaching the bear rug or the girl upon it. As he had noticed before, Legolas saw now how the light seemed to bend away from her. The first time had seen her, he thought her to be a gloom, a bit of night lost in the day; it was even more apparent right now, for an irregular circle of dimness created a demarcation between the daylight and her darkness, including behind her, since of course she cast no shadow.

Running on miruvor and adrenaline, Legolas trod around the corpse of Elise’s father, careful not to step upon the man nor fall over him, and then shambled forward until he stood beside one of the rocking chairs sitting in front of the rug and hearth. As he feared she might, Elise held her hand out to draw him down upon the rug with her, to invite him to join her, and also as he feared might occur, Legolas felt his arm begin to lift. He had no more than twitched before Kalin grabbed his hand with his own, which he then held onto tightly.

_I have to be more careful._ Legolas spared Kalin a grateful smile. His sentry did not return it, but watched the Prince with more terror than Legolas had ever seen upon Kalin’s face.

In Kalin’s long years as Legolas’ guard, the Prince had seen his sentry look afraid, of course, such as the time when Kalin had stepped into a horde of Goblins to fight his way through them so he could take his Elfling Prince back to their King’s halls; or when many years ago, when Legolas had just begun scouting with the Mirkwood patrol, the terrified Kalin dropped from the limbs of a tree into a circle of spiders who had surrounded his injured Prince, which the guard had then fought singlehandedly to protect Legolas; or even recently, the younger Elf had seen Kalin appear panicked when his Prince had left the sentry alone in a tree, wounded and unable to follow, while his grieving Prince had trotted off to find revenge against Mithfindl. Always, it seemed, Kalin feared more for Legolas than he did for himself, and no truer was this than right now.

As the petrified sentry examined his charge for any sign of Legolas succumbing to the haunt’s sway or giving in to his rhaw’s exhaustion, the younger Elf winced to see the unfathomable depths of Kalin’s love and devotion for him. _I suppose it is for the best that Kalin came inside with me; else, I would end up dead before giving the others the time to search the cellar. But I have to be more careful,_ he repeated to himself. _I cannot let Kalin come to harm because of Elise’s hold over my mind._

When Legolas did not speak but only stared at Kalin in quiet contemplation, the sentry drew Legolas into the present by asking, “Elise is here? Where is she?”

Legolas felt a swell of shame inside his chest that was not caused by Kalin’s query, but merely by Kalin’s forbearing presence. He was reminded of something Estel had told him weeks ago, when they had been speaking of Kalin’s actions during the time when Mithfindl held control of Legolas’ mind and actions – Estel had told the Silvan he thought should Legolas die, Kalin would die with him, just to ensure Legolas would be cared for in the Halls of Awaiting. Something about the way in which Kalin looked at him now confirmed Estel’s supposition, much to Legolas’ anguish. But now was not the time for these thoughts, and so he cleared his throat of the shamed knot rising there and tried also to clear his mind of the imagining of Kalin dying out of a sense of duty to his charge.

He then answered, “She is sitting on the rug just before us. She has her hand out to invite me to join her.”

Legolas wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Kalin’s grip upon his Prince’s hand became evermore bruisingly tight, such that the joints of the younger Elf’s hand popped in protest. “Then we are too close. Let us back away.”

Shaking his head at the suggestion, Legolas tried to assure Kalin but only made the guard’s fear worse when he explained, “She has no body, Kalin. It does not matter where we stand. If she wants to touch us, we will not be able to outrun her.”

He realized the mistake of his words when Kalin grunted. “You should be outside then. Or better yet, on a horse on your way to Imladris, where Lord Elrond might have some knowledge of how to aid you.”

“I will not live to see the valley again,” the Prince whispered. Before Kalin could respond to this morbid declaration, Legolas pointed to the cornhusk dolls and the tattered, frayed, wool stuffed bear beside it to ask the haunt, “Are these yours? They are very pretty. I see that they are made to look like your family, Elise.”

The girl nodded. Her happiness waning into frustration, which Legolas could feel acutely through the strange connection between them, Elise scrambled on her hands and knees closer to Legolas and Kalin, which caused the Prince to stumble rearward out of the way. The younger Silvan used his body to both shield and move his sentry back and away from the potential threat.

Unaware of the reason for Legolas’ stumble and thinking the laegel was no longer able to stand, Kalin released his Prince’s hand to grab his waist, instead, and held Legolas upright while asking, “Are you well?”

Elise seemed not to notice or care that her friend was wary of her. To Legolas’ relief, she was not moving closer to him or Kalin, but to the dolls. Transparent and waifish, the girl appeared to sit upon her heels, though Legolas believed she hovered just a bit above the rug, which did not move nor show indentations from her knees. He found himself grinning at Elise when she bit her tongue between the gap in her teeth where she had lost three in the front without having lived long enough for her adult teeth to grow in replacement. Elise’s hand hovered over one of the cornhusk dolls. There were two adult dolls, one a man, judging by how its legs were separate as if wearing trousers, and one a woman, given the semblance of skirts. Two smaller dolls were beside them. All had roughly painted on smiles and eyes, and none was particularly well made, even for toys constructed of cornhusks, but it was the yellow yarn pasted to one of the bigger and one of the smaller dolls that had made Legolas realize these were fashioned after her family.

“Legolas?” his sentry asked again, since he had yet to receive an answer. He felt the thrum of fear coming off Kalin in waves.

He meant to tell Kalin that he was fine, that Elise was being good and quiet, and not to worry, but amazement shut his open mouth, for at that moment and with a deep scowl of frustration, Elise reached out to the doll roughly resembling her. He expected her transparent hand to pass right through it, as it had everything else – including his chest the night before. And yet, her tongue still trapped between her teeth in absolute concentration, Elise’s fingers lit upon the small toy, causing it to shimmy a bit ere her digits did as he expected and passed through the husks. His sharp, surprised inhale caused Kalin’s grip of his waist to tighten painfully, and slowly, Kalin began to try to impel his Prince into walking back and away from the hearth, rug, chairs, and little girl ghost.

“Stop,” he implored while wresting his hips free of his sentry’s grasp, only to have the elder Silvan take hold of both his Prince’s upper arms instead. He allowed it, so long as Kalin did not try to haul him away again. “Watch the doll, Kalin. The small one with yellow yarn for hair.”

With Kalin behind him, he could not see the sentry’s face to know if Kalin was doing as requested, but he heard plainly when the elder Silvan gasped, for just then, Elise tried again and managed to shift the doll enough to cause it’s cornhusk skirt to rustle. Kalin whispered, “Was that her? Is she moving it?”

“Yes, she is. I would not have thought it possible,” he answered Kalin, though to the specter he said, “How smart you are, Elise, and so very pretty, just like your doll.”

The small child, her clothes, body, and hair all hues of grey, turned her haunted face to him, laughter in her wide smile at the praise she was given by the Elf. His words also served to encourage her, such that with another moue of concentration, she grabbed the doll again. This time, Elise managed to pick up the cornhusk toy, such that it stood upright for a brief moment, appearing to Legolas very much as if it were walking upon the bear rug, ere her fingers phased through it like she was sunlight and the doll a windowpane. When the toy fell onto the bearskin, Elise looked up to Legolas for more praise, which he gave her after laughing in true mirth at her playfulness.

He told her, “You are very talented, Elise. With more practice, you will be able to make her dance!”

Again, the haunt’s vapid visage lit with adoration for Legolas, for his approbation was a balm to her lonely and neglected soul. Without looking at his sentry, the Prince told Kalin, “Tell the others to go about their business. Elise and I will sit in here and play, won’t we, Elise?” he asked the haunt, who nodded eagerly at this. “Go help them, Kalin. I will be fine.”

Kalin did not want to leave his charge. Legolas’ intimation that he and the haunt would be playing with toys as if this were a normal situation, as if Kalin’s Prince were not dying, and as if the girl were not the cause of it, embittered the elder Silvan towards the haunt, whom Kalin could not even see upon which to fix his disparaging glare. The hands upon his arms did not shift in the slightest, but nor did Kalin argue against Legolas’ assertion. Instead, he merely refused in a tone allowing no leeway for dissension by telling Legolas, “I will not leave you.” Kalin shouted to the others outside, “She is in here and occupied! Go about your search! I am staying here with Legolas!”

Legolas flinched from the brash shouting just at his ear. When Elise looked up to him, she must have caught his pained expression, for her cheer quickly became anger at Kalin, whom she perceived to be upsetting her new Elven friend. He smiled at her – though his smile was genuine, he did so to show her that Kalin was causing him no pain or worry, and thus showing her she had no reason to be upset. Legolas did not want the child upset. He did not know what she might do. But more importantly, it pained him to think of her being sad. She had halved the population of the village in the weeks since her death, she had doomed Estel and Legolas to die, and she was afflicted with some evil entity or curse, but the Prince held fast to the belief that Elise herself was not malevolent.

From the yard, his voice growing closer as he walked nearer the stoop to be heard plainly, Elrohir called out to Kalin, “She’s in there? Is Greenleaf well? Are you two safe?”

“All is well. Just hurry,” Kalin replied.

A shadow dimmed the light coming in through the open door. Legolas looked briefly over his shoulder to see Elrohir standing at the entryway. The Noldo would require more proof and appeasement that his two Silvan brothers were well and would remain so ere he and the others set about their task. Indeed, to ascertain this very thing, the younger twin took in every detail of what he saw – the decaying corpse of the man lying on the floor a few steps from the door, the golden haired woman slumped in a chair at the table, the cradle at her side, in which held the remains of her babe, and the blanket wrapped body of Elise, who the day before Legolas had laid gently at her mother’s feet. Elrohir grimaced at the smell, his finely made nose curling up in disgust. Legolas and Kalin had already begun to grow accustomed to the smell, and thus were not retching as Elrohir seemed about to do.

Rather than ask Kalin again, Elrohir now asked Legolas, “Are you well, Greenleaf? You will be safe in here while we search?”

“Yes, muindor. Please, go do what you must. And be quick,” he said to Elrohir. Legolas turned back to Elise, who had been watching all this and listening to every word spoken.

Although he thought of saving Estel when he tried to incite Elrohir into spurring the others into quick action, Legolas’ teetering stance – kept steady only by Kalin’s hold of his waist again – and his drawn features were incentive enough for Elrohir to do as bid, for the younger Noldorin Lord had not yet given up hope of saving Legolas, as well. Nor had the others given up hope. Without another word, Elrohir jumped off the stoop and to where their friends and allies were awaiting him. Legolas could hear their animated conversation as it drifted to the side of the house, where the door to the cellar laid.

“Elise, the others will be in the cellar, where your grandfather’s treasures are. Stay out of the way, will you, please? I promise you, they will be trying to find a means to help you. And your Uncle Wendt will be there, as well, to aid them. Just stay here with me, please,” he asked of the girl. He felt the need to step closer and sit on the floor with her, to pick up a doll to humor her, or to reach out for her as he had so often wanted to do since first seeing Elise – it was only Kalin’s anchoring hold upon his waist that kept the Prince from giving in to that unfathomable desire.

Whether it was because of his reminder that they were here to help her or because Legolas said he wanted her to remain and play with him, Elise’s bliss grew until the Prince could see the entirety of her toothy grin, while the fiery red of her burning eyes glittered in mischief. She once again reached out for one of the cornhusk dolls, though this time, she took interest in the one fashioned after her father. He watched as her fingertips traced the poorly drawn on face, caressing its features with fondness.

He shifted where he stood, which caused Kalin’s fingers to dig into the scant flesh over his Prince’s hips to keep Legolas from moving away from him. An entirely unwelcome memory surfaced from this touch, which was then followed by another, and then a rush of mortified shame. Kane, Sven, and Cort had all grabbed Legolas by his hips when tormenting him in the wine shop’s backroom, the woods, and in Thranduil’s halls, and Mithfindl had done the same in the small storage room under the stairs. He was not afraid of Kalin’s hands upon him, but disquiet caused by these buried remembrances and the intimacy of the pain caused by his sentry’s harsh fingers’ grip – slight though it was – made Legolas instinctively twist his lower body free of his fellow Silvan’s hold. He staggered away, and while he did not move towards Elise, Kalin had no way of knowing this since he could not see her; therefore, Kalin bounded forward to seize his Prince, though he took hold of Legolas’ arms this time.

“Legolas?” Kalin whispered questioningly.

The Prince did not want to explain to his sentry what had caused his eschewal of Kalin’s distressing but otherwise friendly touch. So instead, he focused upon Elise and asked of the girl, “Can you tell me what you were playing with before you died? If we can find what it was with which you played, it would help us to help you, tithen pen. You were playing with something from your grandfather’s treasures, weren’t you, Elise?”

The child nodded her sheer head solemnly, bashfully, her tangled, long, pale hair not moving a bit as she did so. As though she thought she might be in trouble for admitting this, Elise would not meet Legolas’ gaze with her own comburent one. She poked at the dolls afore her, causing them to rattle against each other, the withered cornhusks rustling together with each jostle. Legolas took a step closer to the girl only to be pulled back by Kalin. Biting back an invective for his sentry, the Prince took a deep breath to calm his fretfully racing heart, though the stench of rotting flesh from the corpses around him did little to appease his anxiety. _If only Kalin would leave me alone with her. I would speak to her without his knowing of what we spoke,_ the laegel wished, for in addition to his questions about the blighted object for which the others searched, he yearned to ask the girl if there was some way to end her curse upon Estel.

Uselessly, Legolas tried to tug free of Kalin’s grasp. The constant restraint was beginning to wear on his nerves in addition to reminding the Silvan of the many times in recent months when he had been held against his will. Knowing the child could read his emotions as easily as he could read hers, the Elf tried to bury these memories back where they belonged – in the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind. He sought to ease her apparent fear of being reproached, “You are not in trouble, dear child. I need to know what treasures you took for your own. I need to know where you put them. It is important, Elise, for us to find that treasure. It may be the key to our helping you,” he reiterated.

Elise was sitting upon her heels one moment and standing the next. She did not move at all to accomplish this, but merely disappeared from the rug to reappear just in front of him, all of which occurred in the literal blink of the Silvan’s eyes. Legolas fought the urge to step back, since he knew Kalin would react poorly to this. When her arm lifted out to him, Legolas tensed but did not move from the way. Her consciousness tugged at his mind, seeking entrance into his thoughts, and the odd humming began to reverberate through his head, while an ache fostered in his forehead. Willingly, this time, Legolas closed his eyes to welcome the vision she would show him. He was not disappointed to do so, for once his eyes were shut, he saw the recognizable, rocky bank of the creek by which he and Estel had travelled to get here – they very same stretch upon which they had found Elise’s body, if the Prince was not mistaken. In this miasmatic trance, he fell to his knees, which were bare and filthy, and he saw his pale, small, child’s hands reach out to the base of an oak tree. Removing first a small slab of stone, the Elf – as Elise – dug through a pile of leaves and mulch to reach a small box made of warped and splintered wood. Happiness soared through him at the mere sight, but it was the haunt’s happiness, not truly his own, and it came because of the simple pleasure of having a secret box full of baubles that she could call her own. In this memory she showed him, she ran her hand over the box, but startled when a splinter from the wood embedded itself deep within her forefinger. As Elise did in the memory she shared with him, Legolas let loose a snuffling gasp, as a child might do before beginning to sob.

Kalin heard this plainly. The elder Silvan shook the younger by his hold of his charge’s arms, rousing Legolas from Elise’s memory and startling the Prince into opening his eyes by bellowing, “Legolas! What is wrong?”

He staggered a bit but remained standing, though the vision was now gone. _It doesn’t matter. I know where she has hidden the items she took from her grandfather._

It wasn’t until Kalin forced him to turn around to face his sentry that the younger Elf realized he was weeping silently. Unwilling to allow his gaze to falter from the girl for long, Legolas looked back to Elise, which is when he realized she was weeping, as well. These were not tears of joy, but of agony, though what caused this, he did not know. Again, the Prince wanted nothing more than to walk into the child’s translucent form, hold his arms out to her, and offer her comfort. And this was especially true when she held a hand out to him. The night before, the laegel had wondered at how he could see the dirt under her fingernails – dirt that had been there upon her death and now remained as a part of her incorporeal form. Just like the dirt, the Prince could see upon the pad of her little forefinger a tiny wound, wherein the sliver of wood from the box had embedded. Upon the girl there was no color save for the rubicund fieriness of her eyes – except he saw now there was also color in that tiny wound, where a single drop of bright red blood, scarcely bigger than the head of a pin, hung eternally on the precipice of falling from her dull flesh. Elise looked at Legolas with utter, inexplicable heartache.

“By Ilúvatar, Legolas, if you do not speak to me, I am dragging you out of here, ghost or not,” Kalin threatened as he shook his Prince roughly by the shoulders to try to gain his attention.

_She is showing me something important,_ he had time to think ere Kalin’s outrage and terror made the sentry begin doing as he had threatened. Seizing hold of Legolas by around his waist, Kalin hauled the younger Elf towards the door.

“Stop. Stop!” he demanded and writhed in his sentry’s arms, while trying to pry his friend’s hands loose from him. When Kalin did not even pause upon hearing his Prince make this demand, Legolas lost his temper, which did not often occur, and especially so with Kalin. Sounding every bit his father’s son, Legolas growled, “You forget yourself. Release me at once!”

Perhaps it was his princely tone or perhaps Kalin finally realized he was manhandling his Prince, but either way, the sentry halted, removed his enfettering hold, and stepped back with the dutifulness of a servant. Normally, Legolas might have felt some guilt for the submissive set of his sentry’s face, for he valued Kalin as his friend and did not like lording his royalty over the guard, but right now, he could not find it in himself to feel anything but anger. Legolas was tired of being treated like an invalid. He straightened his back and his shoulders, appearing more regal than he truly felt.

“My Prince,” the sentry began to apologize for his behavior, though Legolas waved this off.

Turning back to Elise, who was watching Kalin zealously, angrily, as if she wished to intervene on Legolas’ behalf, Legolas walked the few steps back to where he had stood before Kalin tried to remove him. At this, the haunt returned her gaze to him. He did not hear his sentry’s footsteps, but he knew without doubt that despite his castigation of the elder Silvan, Kalin would never be dissuaded from keeping his Prince safe, and the sentry had already come up behind Legolas to be prepared to grab him in case he reached for Elise again.

Legolas reached up to rub at his forehead. Just this action alone caused Kalin to react, and to the laegel’s aggravation, he soon felt Kalin’s hands tighten in the cloth of Elrohir’s cloak, which Legolas wore still. _Why did she show me the splinter? Is it merely because she is a child wishing comfort for this minor injury? Or is it of some importance?_ Elise’s hands were now fisted at her sides. She stood upon the cornhusk dolls, although having no weight to her body, they were not crushed by her bare feet. His head throbbing and his confusion amplifying his tiredness, Legolas decided he would mention this to Estel and the twins in a while. For now, though, he had one more query to put to the girl.

Acutely aware of Kalin’s presence, for his sentry was constantly adjusting his hold of the younger Elf’s cloak, Legolas asked the girl, “I do not want Estel to die. Can you reverse what you have done to Estel?”

Shrugging her shoulders, the girl cast her rubicund, fiery gaze to the dolls under her dirty, pellucidly gray feet. With her toes, she pushed at the smallest of the cornhusk dolls – the one made to represent her infant brother – and caused it to twitch slightly.

_Does she not know? Or does she not want to do so? Curing Estel of this malady would mean she could cure me of it, as well, and she seems intent upon keeping me around to be her newest friend._ The other villagers, or at least those whom she had touched at night, had dissipated with the dawning of the sun or when contacted by light. He wondered, _Will I do the same? Or does she think I will somehow endure because I am an Elf?_ Being that he was the only Elf whom she had touched, this might be a sort of experiment for her, lest she had some innate knowledge causing her to believe he might persist. Otherwise, her fascination with him existed only insofar as her gladness that he could see her now, even while he lived. Unsure of all this, Legolas decided he would try to make a pact with her regardless of his uncertainty. He had nothing left to lose at this point.

And so, he decided to get to his point, while knowing that Kalin would soon throw a fit over it. Even with the time he had given the Ranger by forfeiting his own life’s longevity, Legolas felt he could do more. Should they discover how the girl was trapped between life and death, between existence and nonexistence, then it would likely not save Aragorn. And above all else, he wanted for his lover’s life not to end. With a heart heavy with sorrow but filling with hope, the Wood-Elf bargained with the haunt, “Elise. I want for Estel to live. I want it more than I want to live myself. If there is some means for you to end the curse you have placed upon him… if there is some way for you to help Estel, for him to live… if you can help him as I have promised we will help you…”

“Legolas,” his sentry hissed from behind him and his grip upon the laegel’s cloak tightened. The younger Elf knew his guard was suspicious of what his Prince was about to say.

Thus, Legolas ignored Kalin to beg, “Please, Elise. If there is some way for you to do it, then let Estel live. Let Estel live, and I will stay with you. We will find some way for it to be so. I will be your companion, as you have wanted. I will – ”

And with that, Legolas was able to say no more; once again, Kalin wound his arms around his Prince’s torso in a hold so tight that the air was squeezed from his chest in a quick, painful rush. Forthwith, the younger Wood-Elf was being dragged from the room by the elder Wood-Elf, with Legolas’ feet fumbling for purchase upon the floor and his body bent nearly double over Kalin’s arm. He was unable to stand, to cease his friend’s yanking of him, and soon found himself pulled out of the dim and death-ridden room and right out the door into the blinding sunlight and fresh air. In his hurry to remove Legolas from the danger of the situation his Prince was intent upon worsening, Kalin did not account for the narrowness of the limestone slabs comprising the stoop, and when he tried to continue to haul Legolas as far away from Elise as possible, he walked right off the steps. Legolas was confused by the abrupt, momentary sensation of weightlessness that was soon followed by his fall through the air the short distance to the ground.

Although Kalin quickly tried to roll to bear the brunt of their fall, and perchance to ensure his Prince landed mostly atop him rather than ground, he did not move swiftly enough, and thus Legolas hit the ground first with his sentry landing atop him, instead. By accident, Kalin’s elbow was thrust into Legolas’ chest, which again knocked the air from him. Reflexively, he curled up to protect his vulnerable belly, though it was now too late, and Kalin was already scrambling to his knees beside his charge, his hands flitting over the laegel in indecision of what to do.

“Legolas,” his horrified sentry said. “Legolas, I’m sorry,” Kalin began, but stopped when his Prince shoved his guard away.

“Enough of this. Get away from me,” he demanded of the elder Elf, his voice hoarse and low, since he could not yet pull in a deep enough breath to speak normally. “Do not touch me.”

Elladan, Elrohir, Estel, Wendt, Jakob, and Reana were all in the cellar, and not witness to the two Silvan’s fall. But Elise had seen it. Legolas felt her immense rage through the tether binding him and the haunt. He hurried to rise; he managed to twist and crawl enough so that he was reclined on his left hip with his left arm holding him from the ground, but a painful grating sound inside his chest once more stole his breath, and when he saw Elise standing just behind Kalin, he feared he would not be able to prevent her. She brought the dark of the house with her, it looked to Legolas, for despite standing in the full sun of the midday, the air around her was obscured by the umbra of her impossible being. 

“Legolas,” the elder Elf whispered miserably. Kalin was wholly unaware of the proximity of his demise.

The Prince was looking beyond his sentry, over Kalin’s shoulder, and to Elise, but he was able to note the tears accumulating in Kalin’s eyes – tears that gathered because the sentry had injured the Prince whom he loved beyond all reason, which in turn hurt him immensely. Moreover, just as Legolas had never been on the receiving end of his sentry’s anger as he had that morning in the schoolhouse, Kalin had never been the recipient of his Prince’s wrath before – his anger, yes, but not like this – and it broke Kalin to witness it.

But he could not care about appeasing Kalin’s regret, not when Elise stood behind his sentry. Elise’s thin face was set in a glower; her fiery, red eyes were mere slits while she glared at Kalin. He watched with fear as she reached her diaphanous, grey-fleshed hand out for Kalin, to touch him, to take retaliation against the Silvan sentry for his carelessness in his treatment of her only friend – Legolas.

“No, Elise,” he groaned to the girl and held his own hand out as if by this he might stay her. His eyes only upon her, he did not see how he had startled Kalin. “Stay there. Do not touch him. I am fine,” he reassured her, though he winced when he twisted his chest too much and his newly broken ribs grated inside his chest. He settled a smile upon his face, while hoping it did not look as false as it felt to be. “It was an accident, Elise. It was an accident. Do not hurt him.”

One moment the specter was behind Kalin, her fingers stretched out to sap the life from his sentry, and the next she stood on the side opposite of Kalin, such that he had his sentry on one side and Elise on the other. _How can she possibly look so worried for me when she has sentenced me to death?_

“Where is she?” his frantic sentry asked. Kalin was immobilized with fear, given that he had just heard his Prince beg for Elise not to touch the guard and thus initiate the end of his life. But he also wanted to protect his charge, and so beseeched Legolas to tell him so he could remove the younger Elf from harm’s way, “Where, Legolas? What is she doing?”

Peering down at the Wood-Elf, Elise began to cry. Legolas could not stand to see it. His shaking, fatigued arm gave out under him and he toppled back to his side upon the ground. And then, with a flicker of shadow, she was kneeling beside him, her fingertips so cold where they hovered just short of touching his face that he thought the tears trailing from his eyes would freeze upon his cheeks. He coughed, and then he groaned as the grating of his broken ribs shifted inside his chest.

“Promise me,” he whispered to her. When he coughed again, he tasted blood, though whether this was from a lethally punctured lung or whether he had bit his tongue during his fall, he did not care to dwell upon. The connection between the Elf Prince and Adan child told Legolas she would agree to his arrangement. Taking a breath caused his vision to blacken, but he pulled in enough air to offer again, “Let Estel live and I will stay with you.”

Legolas saw Elise nod, and then he saw no more.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :(

The cellar was dank, dark, and disused. Minute slivers of illumination trickled between a few ill-fitted floorboards from above, but without windows or other openings save for the double doors leading down a short set of steps cut into the thin layer of dirt over the underlying bedrock, there was little light by which to see; however, there wasn’t much to be seen, anyway. The cellar had only been dug beneath less than half the size of the whole house, was shallow such that one could barely stand without hitting the floor joists overhead, and had bare earthen walls and a hard packed dirt floor. Usually, one might find foodstuffs in a cellar, such as potatoes, pumpkins, and other root vegetables, but this one was devoid of anything except a small, messy pyramid of crates stacked in the approximate center of the area. Aragorn stood at the top step, Jakob in front of him, and Wendt in front of Jakob. The twins and Reana stood just behind the three Edain.

Jakob peered into the darkness and asked Wendt, who would know better than any of them would know of the contents of the cellar, “Is this all there is?” Estel’s fellow Ranger had asked the question upon his own mind. The fiery-haired Watcher commented with a snort of disbelief, “Doesn’t look like much of anything.”

Wendt laughed in sarcastic amusement. The blacksmith led the way into the room and to the stack of poorly constructed wooden crates. His thick black hair, twisted into ropes beneath his protective leather cap, caught cobwebs from the floor joists, which Wendt had to duck under lest he hit his head. There wasn’t much room to stand in, and less so for the blacksmith, who was taller than everyone else was.

“As I said at the schoolhouse, Emler sold most of what he had acquired, using the proceeds over the years to buy this farm for Galeb and Jenafer, and to help out the village when times were rough. This is all I know of, except whatever Elise has hidden away in her hidey-hole. Jenafer didn’t like for Emler to leave this stuff about the house. Said it was creepy. So I doubt there being anything upstairs from the tombs.” Wendt tapped the top crate with a single finger. “There won’t be much to look through, I guarantee it. What is left is only what Emler had become sentimental about, rubbish he liked to take out to show while he told his stories about how he got it. None of it is worth anything, I’m sure; else, he would have sold it already.”

Aragorn went to the stack of crates. He counted six of them in total, all of them made in similarly rough fashion, and as he picked up the first one, several spiders ran from the slits between the slats of wood. He tilted the container towards the entryway to expose its contents to the scant light – within the mostly empty crate were two small, vaguely men shaped statues carved of chipped and grimy soapstone, a rotted piece of cloth that might have once been a pennant, and a box, no bigger than Aragorn’s palm, which was made from hammered copper. He carefully lifted out the box and pried open its lid. His twin brothers were standing on either side of him, both of them careful not to stand in such a way as to block the light; they watched in curiosity as Estel finally managed to pry the lid off to reveal the contents.

He lifted a hand to rifle through the items inside the box but was summarily stopped by Elrohir. Wordlessly, the twin pulled free his dagger from his belt and used it to push around the box’s contents. Therein laid a few more soapstone carvings, though these were much smaller than the two in the crate, with one only half the size of the littlest of Aragorn’s fingers. Other than the statuettes, the box held several pieces of jewelry made of mere tin rather than the usual gold or silver, a knife’s hilt carved into a wolf though without the knife’s blade, and a jumble of dry rotted wooden beads. He sighed in exasperation, thinking at first, _Junk. Truly, Wendt was right,_ until it occurred to him, _but whatever is the cause of Elise’s current condition, it need not be worth anything, I reckon. It need not be a gold chalice encrusted with rubies, but may only be a trinket, much like these wooden beads._

Reana and Jakob were with Wendt, who was shoving crates towards the steps for them to carry out in the daylight for closer inspection. Eventually, they would burn whatever they found, while anything incombustible would be smashed and cast into the fire anyway, such as the soapstone statues. Their logic was simple and unproven – if what held Elise in its sway was at all related to the Barrow-wights, then fire may destroy it, just as it did the Wights. Estel replaced the lid upon the box, dropped it back in the crate, and carried the crate to the bottom step to place with the others. Truth be told, Aragorn didn’t care what was in the boxes. He cared only to rid themselves of Elise, and thus, perchance rid themselves of the curse upon Legolas and himself.

“Check the ground and the corners, so we don’t miss anything that might have fallen out,” Elladan suggested.

Having six people in the small space was five too many, truly, for they all blocked each other’s light and made it difficult to search, but the three Noldor and three Edain all scoured the ground and walls for anything that might be left behind. Yet, everyone stopped when they heard raised voices from overhead, along with what sounded like someone or something being dragged across the floor. They all paused to listen. Specks of dust floated down into Estel’s face when he looked up at the floor above his head. Whether his brothers and Reana could tell what was being said, Estel did not know, but instinctively, he turned to his twin brothers to gauge their reaction, as he knew they were more likely to hear of what the Prince and sentry spoke than he could hear it. He was not disappointed, for Elladan and Elrohir shared an unreadable glance between them, before they then both looked to Reana.

“What is it? Is something wrong?” he asked his brothers, the instinct to run from the cellar and to the floor above making his feet begin moving towards the doorway ere he had his answer.

“Hold, Estel,” Elrohir soothed the man. The younger twin held his hand out and told his human sibling, “Kalin and Legolas are arguing. Kalin tried to remove Legolas from the house, but Greenleaf ordered him to cease. Kalin obeyed, so Greenleaf must be fine.”

When all remained quiet from above, they returned to their tasks. No one found anything but no one quit until each had examined every nook and cranny for himself or herself. Jakob pulled at one of the long braids of his fiery-red beard while commenting, “I suppose that’s all of it.”

Ere anyone could agree, they heard again the strange noise from before, which Estel thought certain was someone’s feet scrambling for purchase upon the floor, and which made him think, _Whatever is happening, Kalin has had enough of it. He is disobeying Greenleaf’s order to cease and is pulling Greenleaf out of the house anyway._ It took the Ranger a moment to get his bearings, but following the sound and deciphering where the front door would lie overhead, it seemed clear to Estel that Kalin had indeed hauled his Prince to at least the front door of the house. They all heard a thud, which did not arouse Aragorn’s worry overly much – at least, not until he saw Elrohir and Elladan’s eyes grow wide. The twins rapidly threaded between the crates at the foot of the steps and without word fled from the cellar. Aragorn did not hesitate to follow behind them. _Sweet Eru, what has happened?_ he asked himself.

His eyes stung from the light of the early afternoon sun, for they had just grown accustomed to the dark of the cellar. When he paused at the top of the stairs to suss out which way the twins had fled, he was pushed out of the entry by Wendt, who gave no apology but took hold of Aragorn’s arm, and by this hold pulled the Ranger with him for a short while to hurry him along in the right direction. Once they had rounded the corner to the front side of the house, Wendt let go to sprint towards the slab steps. Estel followed after him but his steps slowed into a complete halt when he saw what had caused the noise that had drawn the twins out of the cellar.

Upon the ground, just beyond the stoop, Legolas laid. The Silvan’s eyes were closed, his body was upon its side facing Aragorn though the Elf’s legs were twisted uncomfortably at his waist, his face was as white as the voluminous autumnal clouds overhead, and Legolas’ lips and chin were befouled in bright red blood. Already, Elladan and Elrohir were on their knees beside the Silvan Prince, with Elladan pushing the sentry aside roughly to reach the Wood-Elf prone upon the ground. Estel noted how Kalin wept unashamedly with his charge’s hand pressed to the center of his own chest, above his heart. Elrohir bent over until he could turn one cheek towards the laegel’s mouth, which he did to try to perceive if Legolas breathed, while Elladan held the young Silvan’s free arm at the wrist, by which he checked for the beat of Legolas’ heart. Strangely, Wendt stood at Legolas’ feet and scowled at Estel, as if he thought this could only possibly be Aragorn’s responsibility.

Unable as of yet to force his feet forward, Estel shook his head at both Wendt and the sight before him. _No. He cannot be dead. I will not abide it,_ the Adan decided. Anger engulfed his being. He had left his lover in Kalin’s care, as he had thought the sentry would see to it that his Prince would be safe. Apparently, Kalin had failed at this, and while he did not even know what had happened or if Kalin was at fault, Estel was consumed by rage for the Silvan guard. _I will not have it. You cannot die,_ he now spoke to Legolas. _I will not let you die, Greenleaf._

Reana came to stand beside him. She twisted her fingers into the Ranger’s digits in congenial comfort, while on the other side of Aragorn, Jakob put a hand upon his Chieftain’s shoulder. The Elleth murmured to him with sympathy, “Come, Estel. If he is dying, you should be near. He will feel your presence, tithen pen,” she called him as many of the Eldar in Rivendell had called him while the Adan had been a child, and that which some called him even now, since to them he was a small child still.

Reana’s kindness broke through Aragorn’s wrath and removed his hesitation to move closer. With Reana’s fingers still tangled with his own, the human unsteadily walked to where Legolas laid upon the ground. He loosed his hand from Reana’s and stopped close by his lover’s fair head, which lolled limply upon the ground as Elladan and Elrohir shifted him onto his back with Elrohir moving the laegel’s legs simultaneously with Elladan adjusting the laegel’s torso.

Although the twins were already being cautious in their actions, Kalin warned them tearfully, “Careful. His ribs may be broken. I think I heard something snap when I hit him.”

Both Noldorin Lords’ verdigris gazes flew to Kalin at hearing this, for Kalin had not explained himself well and Elladan and Elrohir were immediately incensed to think the elder Silvan had struck the younger Silvan. Aragorn strode to where Kalin sat at Legolas’ feet, grabbed the sentry by the cloth of his tunic over his shoulder, and hauled the Wood-Elf to his feet.

“You hit him?” he raged at Kalin. In a fistfight, Aragorn knew he would land a few well-placed punches but never win against Kalin, who was stronger and had millennia of experience over him; and yet, the urge to thrash the sentry was not tempered by this knowledge. When in his surprise the wide-eyed and alarmed Kalin did not answer soon enough for Estel’s liking, the man prompted by shaking Kalin a bit and repeating, “You hit Greenleaf?”

A hand – stronger than was his own – wrenched his fingers from the staggered sentry’s shoulder. Wendt wedged his thick body between Kalin and the Ranger, reasoning soundly, “I know none of you well, but even I can tell Kalin loves his Prince too much to have hit him… at least, not without good reason. Calm yourself, my friend, and give him the chance to explain.”

He had the sudden desire to flatten the blacksmith’s nose with the heel of his hand. Only because Elladan rose rapidly and now clasped Aragorn’s upper arms from behind did he not do so. His brother spun him around and yanked at him until he was kneeling beside Legolas alongside the elder twin. Elladan ordered of Estel, “Stop arguing and help us, muindor. Whether by injury or the fading of his faer, Greenleaf is barely breathing. Check his legs for damage.” When Aragorn did not obey immediately, Elladan demanded, “Now, Estel. And quickly.”

Merely because he was instinctually prone to adhering to his brother’s demands – since the twins had raised Estel as much as had Elrond – did Aragorn forgo spending his wrath upon Wendt or Kalin and instead aided his twin brothers in checking the Prince for wounds. With practiced hands, he felt his lover’s legs for broken bones. Elladan did the same for Legolas’ arms and neck, while Elrohir palpated the younger Elda’s torso. All of them halted at once when the Wood-Elf’s slight breathing hitched ere he coughed, which caused frothy blood to spray from his mouth onto his chin. Legolas then wheezed in another slight inhale, and then another, and Aragorn’s own respiration resumed only when his fear that he had heard his lover’s last breath was ameliorated.

“I think you are right,” Elrohir lamented to Kalin. He sat back on his heels, pulled aside his tunic to reveal the long, dark blue undershirt he wore, and then with its hem, wiped tenderly at the blood upon Legolas’ face. “At least two of his ribs are broken. I only hope this blood isn’t because they have pierced his lungs.”

To see if this was so, Elladan pried open the unresisting Wood-Elf’s mouth and peered inside; with one finger, the elder Noldo swiped around the laegel’s mouth and moved Legolas’ tongue this way and that so he could see within more clearly. Elladan took a moment to wipe the blood from his hand onto his trousers before he assured them, “He has bitten his tongue. Thank Ilúvatar. I do not see much blood in the back of his throat. I think it is all from his tongue.”

Aragorn wiped at his brow, surprised to find a cold sweat had broken out upon his forehead at the thought of his lover slowly suffocating from the dire wound of a pierced lung. He felt his hope rise, but soon enough it would be dashed. Jakob and Wendt were standing inertly at Legolas’ feet, behind Kalin and Reana, with the latter now holding Kalin’s arm against her breast in quiet succor.

She asked the Wood-Elf, “What happened, Kalin? We heard what sounded like you dragging the Prince across the floor. Did the haunt try to touch him?”

“No. Or at least, I do not think so,” the guard told them with a shake of his head. “I am not sure.”

Having long since finished inspecting the laegel’s long, lean but muscled legs, Aragorn sat back upon his heels to listen, but kept his hands upon Legolas’ calves in hopes the Prince would know Estel was beside him. He looked up to Kalin to find the sentry yet again weeping without shame. Having not yet heard what the sentry meant by his having ‘hit’ the Prince, Aragorn did not hide his bitterness when he asked, “Then what happened?”

The Wood-Elf reached up to fold his hand over Reana’s where she held his other arm in both of her own against her chest. He explained, “Legolas told me Elise was at the hearth somewhere. She moved her dolls,” he told them in wonderment. Kalin was not truly paying attention to what he was saying, as his focus was mostly upon the supine Prince on the yard before him, and so rambled somewhat as he spoke. “I saw them move. Legolas spoke to her, telling her she was smart. I do not truly know what happened, since I cannot see her, except my Prince seemed intent upon reaching out to her. I kept him from doing so, of course.”

What Aragorn feared would happen had happened. If Elise were truly cursed by a fate similar to a Barrow-wight, then Legolas had no choice in his reaction to the haunt, but it comforted Aragorn little to realize this.

From his fall to the yard, the sentry had accrued soil upon his hands, which became mud leaving dark trails upon his face when he ran his palms down his tear-wetted cheeks. “He asked her to tell him what she had been playing with when she died. He grew very still and quiet, so much so that it seemed he quit breathing – at least, until he began to weep. He would not answer me when I tried to speak to him, and so I attempted to bring him outside. But he ordered me to release him, and I did. He went back to the hearth and asked if she could reverse what she had done to Estel, saying he did not want Estel to die.”

A thrumming dread filled the man’s belly. Before Kalin spoke the words, he knew what the Silvan would say. This presentience eliminated his anger for the sentry, for if proven true, Aragorn would have knocked Legolas out cold to prevent it. _Please do not let him say it. Do not have done this, Greenleaf,_ he prayed. His every muscled clenched and his belly turned over nauseously in anticipation of what Kalin would tell.

“He told her he would stay with her, that he would be her companion forever, if she would only release the curse upon you,” Kalin said with lachrymose acrimony as he now spoke to Aragorn directly. “I hauled him from the room, but in my haste I walked us right off the stoop. I tried to break his fall but ended up landing on top of him.”

He smoothed his hands up his lover’s legs to wrap both hands around the laegel’s thigh. As was typical of Elves in general, Legolas’ slender body hid his strength, and though Aragorn could encircle his lover’s thigh easily enough by this grip, the Silvan Prince housed strength greater than the three sets of the three Edain’s legs combined. But at this moment, with Legolas unconscious and his leg limp in Aragorn’s hands, the Prince seemed as frail and breakable as any Adan. His anger was soon for Legolas alone. Had his lover been awake, Estel might have tried to shake some sense into the Elf. _My life is not worth your life,_ he told the Prince, watching numbly while Elrohir wetted his undershirt with water from his waterskin to clean Legolas’ face better.

“For fuck’s sake,” Elladan complained beside him. Rarely did the twins use foul language such as what the Noldo said now, but never had its use been more appropriate. “Eru damn you, Greenleaf, you bloody fool,” the elder twin added vehemently, not meaning what he said but needing to express his outrage somehow.

“Elladan,” Elrohir murmured so softly that his brother’s name was barely audible. But this was enough to calm Elladan’s outrage, and the elder twin took to fiddling with Legolas’ clothing just to occupy himself.

Perhaps feeling as if Elladan’s anger might also be for him, or perhaps expecting for Aragorn to rail at him for failing to protect his charge as promised, Kalin pled to be understood, telling them all, “I tried to stop him. I kept him from reaching out to her. I kept him from walking into her. But I was not fast enough. I could not stop him talking. I could not stop him from making that offer. I am sorry,” he ended in a tormented whisper.  

They stood and sat in silence for a while, each of them thinking of Kalin’s explanation and what it meant for Legolas, Estel, and the village. Realizing that his grip upon the Wood-Elf’s thigh would likely leave a bruise, so tight had it become, Aragorn forced himself to release Legolas’ upper leg, but could not convince his hands to remove themselves from the Silvan entirely. So instead, he brushed dirt off Legolas’ trousers, doing as was Elladan in occupying his hands while his mind raced relentlessly. He looked back to Kalin and saw from the distress upon the sentry’s face that his and the twins’ taciturn contemplations were being taken by Kalin as silent condemnation.

Aragorn forgave the sentry regardless of there being nothing to forgive. “It isn’t your fault. You protected him as best you could, as you have always done, Kalin.”

The sentry gave the Ranger a grateful but ephemeral, insipid smile.

“I suppose we will not know if she accepted his proposition until Greenleaf awakens – if he awakens,” Elrohir surmised.

“No, she accepted it.” Kalin began wringing his hands at his waist until Reana reached out to take hold of them. She pressed them just under her breasts both to still them and give the sentry the comfort of her own heartbeat and warm flesh – Legolas often did the same with Estel’s hand, though the Wood-Elf did it for his own comfort and held Aragorn’s limb to his belly rather than his chest. Kalin sighed before he told them with certainty, “She must have been upset I hurt Legolas, even though it was unintended. He told her to stop, to keep her from touching me, I assume, while looking over my shoulder when I was knelt down beside him trying to help him. He told her it was an accident. But then, he asked her to promise him, saying again he would stay with her if she spared Estel.”

Having remained mostly quiet thus far, Wendt now piped up to inquire, “But since you can’t see her, how do you know she accepted his bargain?”

“Because Legolas smiled in relief, right before he passed out.” Unable to endure standing still when he would rather be beside his Prince, Kalin knelt, took hold of the younger Silvan’s calf just to be in contact with the laegel, and then looked to Aragorn to say, “I am sure of it. He bargained his life for your life.”

Estel felt no differently. Well, he felt no differently than he had all morning, that is. Since Legolas had bequeathed to him the energy of his Elven faer, Aragorn’s own Adan faer was still swollen with the excess vitality given to him, and thus he felt more energetic, focused, and alive than he could ever remember feeling before. Since waking hours ago, Aragorn’s back had not been as acutely numbed as it had been upon falling asleep the night before, nor was it deadened now. Likewise, the night before he had been shivering, at least until he had climbed into bed with Legolas, but upon waking this morning, the shivering had stopped and had yet to return. All of this muddled whatever conclusion the Ranger might draw in regards to whether his lover’s bargain was accepted by Elise.

_I wonder if she can even reverse what she has done to me. Who is to say she didn’t agree with Legolas’ bargain, only to renege upon it once she has her way? And what makes either Greenleaf or Elise believe Legolas will last as a haunt any longer than any of the others whose souls released to Mandos upon contact with light?_

He sensed Kalin’s sharp gaze upon him and looked up to gauge the wrath the sentry must surely be holding for him out of some misplaced idea that Estel wanted to live at the cost of Legolas’ life; and yet, Kalin did not appear terribly angry, but rather deeply sorrowed. Estel had done nothing wrong but the urge to apologize pried this from his reluctant lips, “I am sorry, Kalin. I never wanted for Legolas to strike such a deal. Without hesitation, I would take his place if I could.”

All this morning, since first Kalin suspected what his Prince had been doing to bolster the Adan’s flagging life, the sentry had displayed little but ire for Estel. Now, though, he gave the Ranger a grave smile and shook his head. “He loves you more than he loves anyone, Estel. More than himself. My Prince is just like my King. When he has his mind set to something, nothing will dissuade him. I only hope,” the guard told the Ranger, echoing unknowingly Estel’s thoughts of a moment ago, “that Elise keeps her end of their bargain and lets you live, so Legolas’ life will not be given in vain.”

The Elf lying on the ground motionless and insensible before him had not brought home the finality of the situation as did Kalin in that moment, for if Legolas’ lifelong friend and sentry believed his Prince was now certain to die, then Estel could find little hope to see it otherwise. The bright sunshine, the twittering of the birds, the buzz of insects, the vast mantle of aquamarine sky overhead, the soft rustle of leaves in the distance as the light breeze brushed through them, the tangy smell and cushiony feeling of the grass under his knees – all of this was in stark contrast to the realization of Legolas’ death. It had not seemed possible up until now.

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_“Quiet! That is enough. I have heard enough of your excuses,” his father ranted._

_The young Silvan was kneeling on one knee upon the floor of his father’s study, his head bowed in obeisance to his King’s wrath. He stayed that way as Thranduil stalked in circles around him, quiet for the moment, as if waiting for Legolas to speak again and thus give the King more fodder for the fire of hatred that so often consumed Thranduil’s rational thought. Thranduil had yet to hit Thranduilion, but it was coming – this, the younger Elf knew._

I have been here before, _he told himself, his mind wavering in the all too real remembrance as if he were living it now, rather than living it inside his deteriorating faer and shattering mind._

_As though he had not just told the Prince to be quiet, Thranduil now exclaimed, “Have you nothing to say for yourself? You are a Prince! Not some ordinary border guard. You ought to have let your sentries attack first, you fool.”_

_Still, the younger Elf kept his silence. Soon he would speak and it surprised him to know just what he would say before he said it, since he was not yet clearly aware that as his faer faded from his rhaw his mind was replaying many of the memories of his long-lived life._ His boots will stand upon the edge of the carpet there, and then I will answer him, _he thought just as his father’s boots came to a stop at the edge of the carpet upon which Legolas knelt, and the Prince’s mouth opened to answer his father, “I only thought to protect the Edain, Ada. They were women and children, strayed too far from Lake-town as they searched the forest for food and herbs. I could not watch them be slaughtered by the Yrrch.”_

_By the hair at the top of the Prince’s head, Thranduil thrust his son’s head back so the King could look Legolas in the eye as he told him, “They are mere humans. They are nothing. You are a Prince! One of the Eldar! You may think it honorable to risk your life for some peasant humans, but if saving them brought your death, your life would be a waste. Do you understand me, Legolas? Their lives are nothing in comparison to your life.”_

_Legolas was only a little over a hundred years old. He had only been patrolling the woods with his sentries and the border patrol for a few months, but already, he had been injured three times during the brief forays into the forest his father allowed him. The way his father held his hair twisted Legolas’ neck, and thus his upper back, where between his shoulders laid a thin cut made by a whistling arrow that he had avoided by ducking during the fight. In truth, the wound was merely a scratch. The arrow’s head had not been poisoned, the wound needed no gut stitching, and it had not even bled enough to stain his torn tunic. Yet, the scab over the wound was aggravated by the odd twist of his upper back, and other than this minor twinge of pain, Legolas felt little else. Carefully, he kept his face schooled of any emotion, his gaze focused upon his father without truly seeing the King’s irate face, and he did not try to move away._

Speak, _he urged himself. If he did not answer his father, a blow would come, he knew, and as time seemed to slow the longer his King stared down at him in anticipation of an answer, Legolas realized he would not answer Thranduil and his father would soon backhand him – hard – and send him toppling over onto the carpet._ Speak, you idiot, _he thought again._

_“Legolas!” the Elvenking shouted, shaking his son’s head by the tight hold of the hair upon the top of the younger Elf’s head. But the laegel could not even seem to open his mouth; and so, he watched with detachment as his Ada loosed his hold of the Prince’s hair, swept his hand out, and then brought it back across Legolas’ face with all his might._

_Pain burst through the young Silvan’s numb façade. He tumbled to his side upon the floor of his father’s study, catching himself with his hands and righting himself as quickly as possible. Legolas resumed stooping upon one knee and forced his gaze to return to his father’s comburent but simultaneously algid blue eyes. Sometimes, when winter rolled its way across the Greenwood, icicles would form upon the railings of his balcony; these shafts of ice would catch the overcast sky in such a way that they reflected the light bluely back at him. His father’s eyes were the same frore blue just now, like winter’s icicles – sharp and dangerous and obdurately cold._

_He told his father what he always told him. Even had he not already lived through this memory, the young Elf would have known this would be how it ended, for it was how it always ended. Legolas pled for his Ada’s forgiveness by saying, “I am sorry, Ada. I did not mean to upset you.”_

_The icy ire in his father’s visage slowly melted into aggravation. “You are always sorry, my son.”_

_The Elvenking snapped his fingers and then flitted them in an upward motion, as if he were inciting an animal into performing as it had been trained to do. And in some way, this was exactly the case, for through violence, insults, and the continual barrage from Thranduil of assurances that Legolas was stupid, worthless, and untrustworthy, the Prince had been trained into behaving just as his father desired – most of the time, anyway. Legolas climbed to his feet and felt glad his King’s anger was easily appeased today. He took the chance to try to explain himself again, hoping to make his father see reason._

_“I am sorry,” he said once more. Wincing at his father’s resigned sigh, the young Silvan was quick to add, “It is barely a scratch, Ada. The healers have already seen to it, and because I jumped into the foray so quickly, none of the Edain were harmed, as were none of our people.” When his King’s face began to darken, Legolas knew he had talked out of turn and incited his father’s wrath into renewing, and so, seeking to dampen Thranduil’s rage before it enflamed again, he debased himself eagerly in telling his King, “But you are right, Ada, of course, and I was foolish. I should have waited for my sentries to act before me, as is their duty. I will not make the same mistake again, I promise you.”_

_For a few lingering moments, Thranduil studied Thranduilion, looking for falsehood or sarcasm, but finding none, the Elvenking nodded, his face cleared of the odium so often shadowing it, and he gave another longsuffering sigh. As he walked back to his desk and the bottle of wine thereon, Thranduil ordered, “Go then. And send Kalin in. I wish to speak to him of his negligence in guarding you. If he cannot keep you safe, I will find someone who can.”_

_The numbness fled the Prince as he found himself fearing for Kalin, instead. The Elvenking would never strike Kalin as he had Legolas, but he might do as threatened and remove Kalin from his service to Legolas. While the Prince had friends, he had few friends to whom he could turn in matters closest to his heart. The Noldorin twins Elladan and Elrohir, their father Elrond, and his faithful sentry, Kalin, were truly the only four of his friends to whom Legolas felt he could entrust such matters. To lose Kalin as his sentry would break the young Silvan’s heart._

_“Ada,” he began, causing his King to turn back to him with exasperation at having his order’s fruition delayed. He risked another smack to the head for his insolence, but Legolas would protect Kalin as his sentry dutifully and gladly protected his Prince. “Ada, it is not Kalin’s fault,” he lied without compunction. “Kalin shouted for me to halt, to wait for him, and I did not listen. It is not his fault I acted foolishly.”_

_Again, Thranduil studied Thranduilion’s face for signs of mendacity. Legolas was not an accomplished liar. In fact, so poorly did he lie that he rarely tried. To his amazement and relief, however, the Elvenking nodded and waved his hand in dismissal, ere he turned back to his desk and seized his bottle of wine by the slender neck of the bottle. “Fine. Tell Kalin I need no report then. But take care, Elfling. I will send Kalin to the southern woods to patrol and find you a less lenient keeper if you do not mind the one you have.”_

_He stifled his relieved smile, bowed to his King though Thranduil now had his back to him and could not see it, and then strode to the door. Outside of it, Kalin awaited, his face pale and drawn with latent wrath._ He has been listening in on what Adar said, _Legolas knew. The sentry examined his Prince intently, looking for dire injury, but although the Elf-King’s backhanded smack had hurt, it would likely not bruise, and while the Prince was certain Kalin had heard it happen, the guard would not bring it up out of respect for his Prince._

_Without speaking, the Prince and sentry made their way deeper into the King’s suite of personal rooms, to the hidden staircase running up and behind the stronghold’s many floors, and began to climb. Once clear of the ever-open door of the King’s guards’ quarters on the floor above Thranduil’s rooms, Kalin whispered, “You should not have lied for me, my Prince. If the King hears a different story from Galendil or Nimrol…”_

_Legolas stopped walking and turned to speak to Kalin, but instead of the dark of the stairwell, he stared down the balcony of his room in Rivendell. Imladrians were singing, dancing, drinking, and laughing together in the fragrant, sunlit courtyard. Gaiety and joyfulness surrounded the young Elf, but Legolas was crying. Rarely did the Prince fight with his beloved friends, Elladan and Elrohir, but today, the three had been playing stones when their game became a petty squabble over whether the twins were cheating. The Silvan, being only twenty-two years old, was younger than the twins – the difference in years between the twins and laegel was few in comparison to the long lives of the Eldar, but being that the first hundred or so years of an Elf’s life were the formative, childhood years, and being that Elladan and Elrohir were beyond this stage they were more mature. What Elladan and Elrohir had intended to be a bit of good-natured fun had worn on the young Prince’s sense of fairness. He had taken the game too seriously, according to his Naneth, and was sent to his room to separate him from bickering with twins and so he could calm himself._

I want to go home, _he complained. He loved to come to the valley. This was his second visit to Imladris. The first time, he, his Naneth, and his Adar had stayed a whole year in Rivendell with Elrond and his family. This time, he and his mother had come without their King, for Thranduil had matters of importance to attend to in the Greenwood, and he missed his father. He plopped down upon the floor of the balcony. Being so young, he shared this room with his mother. In what would eventually become his bathing room, long after his mother’s death, the Queen was reading a book upon a chaise, while the young Prince stewed in his juvenile anger._ It isn’t fair. Just because they are older doesn’t mean they can cheat to win while I just smile and pretend I don’t notice! If Adar were here, he would set them straight. Adar hates cheaters! _he told himself, musing in his mind the self-righteous imagining of Thranduil fussing at Elladan and Elrohir as he sometimes fussed at Legolas when he was being naughty or not minding his mother._

_A knock upon the door made the Queen call out from the inner room, her voice warm and knowing, “Come in, young ones.”_

_At this, Legolas scrambled to his feet. There were only a handful of people who would come to his mother’s rooms here in the secluded family wing of the house, and only two whom his Naneth would call ‘young ones.’ The Prince used the tail of his long tunic to rub at his face and eyes. He did not want the aggravating twin Lords of Imladris to see he had cried like an Elfling. And he refused to go meet them. So instead, he crossed his short arms over his thin chest and unwittingly formed a fair facsimile of his father’s frown upon his face._

What do they want? If they want to argue more, I will stomp their toes!

_“Legolas?” came a call from the room to which the balcony attached._

_From the innermost room, his mother answered on her son’s behalf, telling the twins, “He is on the balcony.”_

_Feeling betrayed by his mother having given away his location, though he obviously was not well hidden, Legolas watched as Elladan and Elrohir came through the veranda doors to where he stood. In truth, the twins had never meant to upset the young Prince; they had truly thought their cheating would amuse Legolas, not anger him, and were both bemused and beleaguered to have upset the Silvan Elf, of whom they were very fond. He said nothing but thought,_ If they are here to gloat over my being sent to my room, I will yank the braids out of their hair.

_“Legolas,” Elrohir said as he smiled at the Prince. “You know, you look just like a leaf with your green tunic and green leggings and green shirt! Greenleaf, indeed!”_

_This startled Legolas, for although he knew his name meant Greenleaf in the common tongue, no one had ever called him that before. The small part of his mind that was aware he had lived through this already, the part that knew he was remembering rather than experiencing this for the first time, thought,_ And the nickname stuck. They never stopped calling me Greenleaf, and even Minyatar began calling me Greenleaf after that, as well.

_“Except this Greenleaf is not so fragile, Elrohir,” Elladan told his twin, poking him in the arm as they both drew closer to the younger Elf. The elder twin smiled identically to his younger twin. “I daresay he was ready to wallop you a short while ago for moving those stones out of turn! And I think he could have knocked you out cold, brother.”_

_The young Wood-Elf’s chest puffed out a bit at the praise. He found himself smiling at the twins in return, his anger forgotten in a flash. “I might have, except Adar says not to pick on those weaker than me.”_

_At this, both twins’ eyes grew wide in tandem with their smiles, and then, all three were laughing heartily at the Silvan Prince’s affable jibe. After a few moments, though, Elladan and Elrohir became somewhat somber. The younger twin began, “We’re sorry, Greenleaf. We shouldn’t have cheated,” while the elder twin finished, “We were just joking around. We didn’t mean to be pestersome.”_

_Even at this age, Legolas was as forgiving, patient, and merry as he would be when older, and all thoughts of wanting to leave the valley, of stomping on the twins’ toes in retribution, or having his father set the twins straight were discarded. He uncrossed his arms from his chest, shrugged his shoulders, and rubbed at his itchy eyes. The twins had noticed the young Prince’s tearful expression but did not mention it. Legolas told his friends, “It’s okay. I shouldn’t’ve gotten so mad. I’m sorry.”_

_Again, Elrohir and Elladan smiled in tandem, as though they were two puppets pulled by the same strings. Elladan laid a hand upon Legolas’ shorter, thinner shoulder. The twins were more mature than was Legolas but they still loved mischief and did not mind catering to the young Prince’s less mature games of pretend. He asked Legolas, “Do you want to go to the garden? I think we have wooden swords somewhere in the playroom. Elrohir smells like a Goblin – it wouldn’t take much pretending to imagine he is one!”_

_Elrohir shoved his brother in mock affront, earning the twins a genuine, cheerful laugh from Legolas. It was a laugh they would grow to love over the years, one that they often found themselves acting the fool for just to hear from the Wood-Elf whom they would grow to love as they loved each other. “Let’s go,” Legolas told them eagerly._

_They crossed the room and out of it, and then across the hall, where sat the playroom in which the twins’ toys were kept. Eventually, this room would become Estel’s room, when the twins and Prince were much too old for toys. And in fact, when Legolas led the way by pushing the door open, he found himself walking into Estel’s room. Confused, he turned back to the twins, but Elladan and Elrohir were nowhere to be found._

_“Legolas?” the young human asked in a sleepy murmur._

_“I am back, Estel, just as I promised,” he replied. His young and higher pitched voice was now older and deeper, but the cheer he had felt to enter the playroom with the twins was now a different kind of cheer, though no less welcome. Legolas crossed the warm and well-lit room to the Adan’s bed. “And I have already asked a servant to bring honeyed cakes and milk. Don’t worry.”_

_Under the mound of blankets, Estel giggled. In wonder, the Prince looked down to find the Adan was barely more mature than Legolas had been a second ago, which is when Legolas’ drifting mind finally realized,_ I am dreaming.

_“Did you pick out a book?” he found himself inquiring of the boy. “Scoot over.”_

_Estel wriggled towards the other side of the bed, leaving room for Legolas to sit beside him, his back against the headboard while Estel reclined against the pillows. The Adan handed the Wood-Elf a slim tome filled with more pictures than words. Legolas turned it over to read the title upon the leather-bound front. The words would not remain still for him to read, but ran down the page like rain might drip down a windowpane._

_He recalled this day so clearly. It was the first visit he had made to Imladris since Estel had come to live with Elrond’s family. Having already been there for months now, Legolas had grown to love the precocious human child as another brother, much to the twins’ and Elrond’s delight. Estel had spent all summer tagging along behind the twins and Silvan, but this day, the Adan had a slight fever and had been sequestered to his bed by Elrond. Elladan and Elrohir had been tasked by their father to take word to Glorfindel of something – what is was, Legolas never learnt, as when the twins had invited him along to ride out to the border, Legolas stayed behind in the valley. The Prince had worried at the time that his friends would be bothered by his rebuffing them in favor of the young human, but upon learning that his Elven brothers and new Silvan friend were to leave him alone in Rivendell for nearly a week, Estel had been heartbroken. He had not cried or pouted, but Legolas had seen the disappointment upon his young face and could not stand to be the cause of it. And so, when he had told the twins he would remain and why he was doing so, they had hugged him and thanked him, though it took years later for Legolas to understand that they had been overjoyed to see their Silvan brother cared so much for their Adan brother._

_The day after the twins left, the young Adan had come down with a minor fever; Legolas had taken it upon himself to keep Estel company until Elrond declared him well enough to be out of bed again. The Prince had read to the child, told him stories, sang him songs, and kept him well fed with whatever he wanted from the kitchens._

I remember this as though it were yesterday, _the Prince thought. Having realized he was dreaming, a seedling of discontent began to sprout inside his mind, however, and seeing Estel lying abed beside him, looking up to him with the awe a young boy often feels for a man whom he sees as a hero and whom he wants to emulate one day, made Legolas recollect a memory much closer to the present moment._ Estel is unwell. Something is wrong. _He could not focus his mind upon the source of his fear but he felt Aragorn’s fear. He knew he had to waken._

_He fumbled to rouse himself. His body would not obey him, but he did not know if he dreamt still or if his actual body could no longer move. He could not open his eyes. He could not so much as shift his head. The dream of Estel in the bed began to dissipate, but there was nothing of substance to replace it. He felt nothing, he heard nothing, he tasted nothing, he smelled nothing, and he saw nothing._

_It was then Legolas realized,_ I am not dreaming. I am dying.

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“His faer is fading from his rhaw,” Kalin declared. As calm as the sentry sounded, tears of agony once again began to fall down his muddied face. Roughly, Kalin pushed at them with his still dirty hands, managing only to smear and make worse the muck he was not even aware decorated his cheeks. He asked everyone kneeling around his Prince, giving each of them a searching look, “Can you feel it? Legolas’ faer is lessening. By nightfall, if not sooner, I believe his faer will be gone entirely.”

No one answered Kalin. Aragorn could not feel it. Despite having a strangely intimate connection with Legolas’ faer – proven by the Prince’s ability to share his soul’s light with the man – he was still not an Elf and thus assumed himself incapable of telling if his lover’s faer was dimming. He thought he might know when the Silvan’s soul departed and Legolas left them with merely a husk – his vacated rhaw, the beautiful but careworn body that currently housed the Wood-Elf but that which would soon be emptied of what made him Legolas. 

“Come. Let us carry him elsewhere. He should not have to die here on the hard ground where the smell of death is so strong,” the younger twin suggested, while the elder twin agreed, “Yes, let us take Greenleaf to the wheat field yonder, where the breeze will be sweet and he can hear the song of the trees along the fence line.”


	28. Chapter 28

As if intending to aid them in their task, Wendt joined Aragorn, the twins, and Kalin in kneeling beside the insentient Wood-Elf on the side opposite of Estel and Elladan, and thus came to rest on his heels next to Elrohir, while Kalin remained at his Prince’s feet and Reana and Jakob stood behind him. Normally, the twins would take the time to wrap Legolas’ broken ribs immediately – especially ere they tried to move him. Aragorn was aggravated his brothers were as bereft of optimism as Kalin seemed to be and so apparently did not see the need to treat the Wood-Elf’s injuries before doing as they desired and moving him away from the death and decay of the cottage.

But Estel did not argue. He would see to his lover’s injuries himself once they relocated Legolas to a place more suitable for the Prince’s Silvan soul. He was given no chance to carry the laegel himself, though he longed to do so, as the twins took this task upon themselves, with Elladan sliding his arms under Legolas’ upper back and knees, and Elrohir gathering the younger Elf’s limbs to situate upon his chest. Aragorn listened for the telltale sound of the Silvan’s breath faltering or ceasing entirely. Although the twins seemed certain that the Wood-Elf’s broken ribs had not pierced a lung, Aragorn did not like how they were taking the chance of causing this to happen with their moving of the Silvan.

 _Do they have no hope at all?_ he asked himself. Typically soft and soundless, Legolas’ breathing was currently stuttering and phlegmatic, as if he had some Adan sickness like the flu, and hearing this, Estel now asked himself, _They do not even seem to care that Greenleaf is choking on his own tongue’s blood. Do they think this a kinder death than the fading of his faer?_ Aragorn stood rapidly and offered a hand to Kalin to pull the Wood-Elf to his feet, and then did the same for Wendt, who nodded and flashed a brief half-smile of thanks; but then, the blacksmith suddenly gripped Estel’s forearm in a painful cinch, while his face grew slack with terror.

Wendt called out loudly, though no one had yet to move beyond hearing, “Wait! Where is Elise?” the blacksmith abruptly worried all of them, and rightfully so. No one had paid much attention to thoughts of where Elise might be during their flight from the cellar to come to Legolas’ inert body. Wendt pinned his dark gaze upon each of their mishmashed band of cohorts while he bemoaned, “We have no way of knowing where she is, do we? Not with Legolas unconscious. She could be anywhere.”

 _We have been careless._ Looking around him at his brothers, friends, and acquaintances, Estel thought their dumbfounded faces and the way each of them had frozen mid-movement might have been laughable – had this not been a matter of life and death, that is. They would be floundering about the farm and house in hopes of not walking right into the Adan child’s specter. Any one of them might be on the verge of being touched this very moment. Any one of them might die because of it. _If Elise truly accepted Greenleaf’s bargain, then my life may be the only one safe right now,_ he contemplated but did not say aloud. _Surely, she would not touch me again, and thus kill me outright, if she hopes for Greenleaf to remain for eternity as her companion. Maybe it would be best to minimize the danger by reducing our numbers._ With this in mind, he turned to his fellow Edain.

“Wendt, you and Jakob should go back to the village. Actually,” Aragorn revised, “Reana, perhaps you should go back with them, as well. There is no call for any of you to risk yourselves. We have found what we need and will do what we must. Lingering here at the farm only puts your lives in danger. Elladan, Elrohir, Kalin, and I can see to burning Emler’s ill-gotten items.”

Of course, the Adan did not suggest for Kalin to return to the village. Kalin would no more leave Legolas right now than would Aragorn, and there was no way Estel would let Kalin take his Greenleaf to the village to die without the Ranger. As morbid as it was – and Estel realized this grimly – he was not missing out on the laegel’s last moments, nor could he hope to help Legolas if the Elf were in the village. Likewise, the twins would never leave Greenleaf or Estel right now, so arguing for them to abandon this perilous situation was no use, either. But the others might be convinced, and Estel would rather not have their lives forfeited so easily, though from how they all looked back at him, he saw convincing the Edain and Elleth to leave would be difficult.

Aragorn turned to his brothers when he heard one of them make some disagreeable sound somewhere between a word and a grunt. The younger of the Noldorin Lords fiddled with the largest of Legolas’ braids – the one that stemmed from the crown of his skull and plaited together most of the hair atop his fair head to keep it swept back from his face. This thick and golden braid hung over Elladan’s arm, while the Wood-Elf’s face was turned into the elder Noldo’s chest. Upon seeing his lover lying in his Elven brother’s arms as such, Aragorn promptly forgot what he meant to argue to the twins, for in that moment, Legolas appeared like a blameless and harmless child – like the Elfling he was once was, long before Estel was born. He watched as Elrohir pulled free the small leather strip keeping the braid from coming apart, and then proceeded to unwind the plait. He did this just to touch Legolas since he could not carry the Prince as was his twin doing. Perhaps he also did it to soothe the Prince, for Legolas had always enjoyed having his hair brushed and played with by another.

Jakob moved close to his Chieftain; he was the first of them actually to step beyond where they had been standing when Wendt reminded them of Elise. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jakob tugging his long beard in rough, likely painful tugs, while his gaunt, freckled face was set in grim determination. But Aragorn did not want to look away from Legolas and did not immediately recall his suggestion for the Edain and Elleth to leave, so caught up was he in the sight of Legolas – a consummate warrior, adept diplomat, incisive strategist, and millennia his senior – looking so heartbreakingly peaceful as he died slowly in Elladan’s embrace.

“Listen,” Jakob began to contend, laying a hand upon his Chieftain’s shoulder, but promptly hushed when Elrohir interrupted by talking over the Ranger.

“Well, brother. For that matter, then, you should go back to the village, as well, Estel,” Elrohir reasoned piercingly. The Noldo’s deft fingers had made short work of the braids above the Prince’s ears and were now lovingly running through the Silvan’s entirely unbound hair; the Noldo did not once look at Aragorn as he continued in a much softer but no less furious tone, “Quite literally, Legolas has sold his soul to keep you alive. It would be terribly ungrateful of you to tempt fate by risking coming into contact with Elise again and dropping dead accidentally,” his brother bitterly bickered back at him.

“I agree. If Greenleaf’s new _friend_ ,” Elladan continued, saying the word ‘friend’ like one might speak of horseshit upon one’s new boots, “truly plans to let you live, it would be a shame for you to die because you were too pigheaded to see reason. Go back with the others. Elrohir, Kalin, and I will do what needs to be done.”

He was not leaving. His brothers knew he would not leave. But Estel also knew the twins were frustrated and angered with him. Since when first he and Legolas had declared their love for each other, the Wood-Elf had continually placed Aragorn’s life, happiness, and well-being above his own, even choosing to refrain from fading from sorrow just so Estel would not be heartbroken over the Elf’s death. He also knew Elrohir and Elladan loved him and wanted for him to live, and their callous words now were hiding their fear for him and their sorrow to be losing their Greenleaf. They could not possibly have good reason to blame him for what Legolas had done to ensure Estel would survive, but reason had little to do with the anguish the two Noldor felt as their closest friend – outside each other, that is – diminished with each second they stood there arguing.

Still, it hurt Estel to have his own life spoken of as something less valuable than Legolas’ life, even though he believed it to be true, and while he hoped his brothers did not intend for their words to sound as such, they sounded such all the same.

Where it rested in companionable comfort upon his shoulder, Jakob’s hand tightened. The fiery-haired Ranger’s umbrage to hear his Chieftain maligned in such a way, even if by Aragorn’s own brothers, caused Jakob to tense up as he prepared to argue. However, surprisingly, it was Kalin who came to Aragorn’s defense. The sentry ambled towards where the twins stood with his Prince between them, his hand held by Reana, and his eyes glued to his charge. Kalin softly, kindly rebuked Elladan and Elrohir, “You are being unfair. And you speak of my Prince as though he were a child who could not decide for himself, as though Estel forced him or swayed him into making this bargain with the Adan child’s ghost. Legolas made his choice freely. Moreover, he would have made this choice if it were either of you facing the same death as does Estel.”

Elladan and Elrohir looked to each other, pooling their wrath between them as they shared their thoughts – that is, without words or so much as a twitch of an eyebrow. Beginning at the Woodland Prince’s forehead, the younger twin combed his fingers through Legolas’ hair in preoccupied affection, and replied, “We are not so sure what you say is right. You forget that when Estel first professed his love for Legolas, Legolas was not in his right mind. You cannot say Greenleaf has made his choice freely when his faer is not free of sorrow and has never been free of its corruption the whole time since he chose Estel.”

Hefting the Prince faintly, though Elladan had no trouble keeping the slight Wood-Elf aloft in his embrace, the elder twin continued, “And since then… nay, since before then, even, since when the merchants snuck up upon Greenleaf and Estel near Lake-town, Legolas has endured nothing but tragedy, torment, and unhappiness because of his choice. He has lived for Estel, endured more than any Elf ought to endure, and suffered more than any Elf ought to suffer – all for Estel. And now he dies for him.”

The man’s jaw fell slightly open in shock. Upon his shoulder, Jakob’s hand was holding so tightly to him that he would have five roughly finger shaped bruises upon his skin by the morning. He wondered, _Have they held this grudge against me all these months?_ Elladan and Elrohir had warned Aragorn away from Legolas; many weeks ago, the morning after the night when the Wood-Elf and Ranger found pleasure together for the first time and the man had professed his love for the laegel, the twins had told the Adan they believed Legolas desired only the comfort Estel gave him, not the man himself. Apparently, neither of his Elven brothers had changed their mind on this. He was gaping with shock, he realized, but could not stop himself from doing so, not even when he looked to Kalin to see what the sentry thought of this. It was some small relief to find Kalin appeared just as taken aback by the vitriolic twins’ opinions as was Estel surprised by them.

“Unfair, you say?” the younger twin repeated Kalin’s words back to him. “There is nothing fair about any of this. Least of all for Greenleaf,” Elrohir finished, his fingertips idly tracing the dark amber brows upon the Wood-Elf’s unlined forehead.

 _For all their talk of accepting Greenleaf’s choice to be with me – a mortal nobody – Elrohir and Elladan hold me accountable for everything that has happened to Legolas. Mithfindl, the periapt, the scar, Kane in Thranduil’s halls, and perhaps even the Elvenking’s anger – it is all my fault, by their thinking._ His brothers could not have hurt Aragorn more had they twisted a dagger into his heart. For them to bare their true feelings now, when Legolas was dying with neither twin nor sentry having any hope for the laegel’s recovery, was beyond cruel. Estel blinked back the sting of tears. He would not give the twins the satisfaction of knowing they had wounded him with their betrayal and accusations. _This is not mere worry or frustration making them say these things. They have hidden their animosity for me this whole time. They sound like Thranduil._

Everyone there all had rational motives for waiting to stay, though for the three brothers and the Silvan sentry, it was the immeasurable love they felt for Legolas – and for the twins, the love they felt for Estel. Perhaps Kalin adhered to some duty to see through his Prince’s final wish of ensuring Aragorn lived, but also, despite their arguing and scuffling this day, Kalin also held affinity for the Ranger as a friend and would want to do as he could to keep Estel alive. Jakob, Wendt, and Reana did not know the Prince well enough to love him, no, but they each had valid reasons for wishing to remain behind to help. Jakob would stay because he was duty bound by his pledge as a Watcher and held dear his friendship with Aragorn, along with feeling some obligation to his Chieftain for Estel having saved Jakob’s life years ago; Reana would not leave as she held sacred her oath to Glorfindel and Elrond to keep Elladan and Elrohir safe, besides being an honorable Elleth who would be willing to die to be of aid to the village however she might; and Wendt – well, Wendt was Elise’s uncle, after all, and not likely to want to leave until her lingering spirit was released. Besides which, although Aragorn found it hard to admit, Wendt also seemed honorable and genuinely concerned for Legolas and Estel, while also having a clear stake in ending his niece to end her terrorization of his fellow villagers.

None of them would be leaving.

Because Aragorn had not responded to their taunting disgruntlement, the twins watched their human brother closely, their incisive green eyes cutting easily through Aragorn’s feeble attempt at stoicism. He had the clear impression they waited for his anger to rise; in fact, he felt as if they were intentionally trying to goad him into losing his temper to justify their own anger or at least to give vent to it, to release the suppurative denunciations the twins had kept hidden for months now. He wondered if it would make them feel all the better if they managed to infuriate him. Often, when terrified on behalf of one of his loved ones, the Adan would hide his fear for his friends or family with wrath. It was a habit learnt from his twin brothers.

But it would not happen now. Today, Estel could not muster up the ire. The person whom he loved above all others was soon to die and his brothers had seemingly turned against him in their bereaved anger. He glanced towards Anor, which had ridden just over halfway through the expanse of the sky overhead. Again, he felt Jakob’s hand give his shoulder a friendly squeeze. His fellow Ranger’s silent support gave Estel the courage to speak without fear of responding to his Elven brothers’ tactlessness with further injurious allegations. They could rail at him all they wanted, just so long as they did not impede his trying to save Legolas’ life, as his lover’s life was his first priority right now.

“You both know I did not want this,” the Adan told his twin brothers quietly and calmly, but was unable to suppress from his guarded features the betrayal he felt by their words. Estel swallowed thickly. “I would have died near Lake-town to keep Greenleaf from the merchants’ grasp. I would have drowned myself in the creek had I known then what Greenleaf and I shared that night would cause the scar. I would have gladly taken Legolas’ place in being Mithfindl’s victim to save Legolas the excruciation he experienced.”

Not caring about Elise or their audience, most of whom were in the dark about of what Estel spoke, he stepped to wedge his way between Elrohir and Legolas. Recalling through what the Elf had lived made Aragorn wish to comfort his lover, despite the Elf being unconscious to receive it; and so, reaching out, he took hold of Legolas’ hand from off the Wood-Elf’s chest and brought it to his mouth, where he pressed a kiss to each knuckle of the long and nimble fingers thereon.

“If you would rather I die today and Greenleaf live, tell me what to do and I will see it done,” he replied to them in fervent frankness. He did not care if his twin brothers spoke out of anger, for he felt keenly the impaling honestly behind their distraught outburst. “I would rather it be so, as well. You are right. My life is nothing in comparison to Legolas’ life, and I will give it gladly to keep him alive and safe if you will but tell me how to see it done.”

Upon hearing how Estel had taken their insensitive grievances and realizing they had not incited an argument but the Adan’s sorrow, the duplicate brothers shared the same expression of surprise. “Estel,” the younger twin began, the ire upon his face softening somewhat into regret.

Aragorn staved off any further discussion with the twin. He whirled around and interrupted Elrohir by speaking louder than did his brother in saying to his fellow Edain and Reana, “Stay here if you wish. Legolas would not want you to. He would want you all to live.”

Wendt, Jakob, and Reana looked no less resolute than before, and he knew they would stay. _I suppose we will all die here together, if it comes down to it._

Tired of discussion, the Adan turned back to the twins. “Hand him to me,” he ordered, and without giving his anguished brothers the chance to apologize or refuse him, Estel slid his arms under the Prince’s back and knees, hefted Legolas out of Elladan’s arms, and then stepped away to keep Elladan from reclaiming the Prince. Without rancor, he bade them, “I will leave all of you to your mourning, if you wish, but I have not given up on Greenleaf yet. If you will not help me save him, then stay out of my way.”

Hoping his belief would not be proven false that Elise would keep her word and refrain from touching him again, Aragorn strode away from the farmhouse, away from his brothers, friends, and the blacksmith, and away from the overwhelming smell of death emanating from the house and barn. He did not look back to see if anyone followed him, nor did he care if they did. He inhaled deeply the gentle fragrance of pines and citrus, the subtle scent of the wax the Silvan used upon his bow to maintain its suppleness, and the underlying, slightest hint of musk, which was the scent of the laegel himself. Hoisting the slight weight of his lover in his arms, Aragorn pushed his mind away from the dizzying imagining of carrying Legolas to lay his body in a hole in the ground, or to place upon a funeral pyre, and shied away from the accompanying, unwelcome imagining of what the laegel might smell of then – of a decaying or burning corpse. So familiar was the warmth and weight of the Elf’s flesh, Estel felt he knew Legolas’ body better than he did his own. He had spent as much time as he was able lavishing his loving attention over every bit of the Prince’s skin, using his tongue and hands and shaft to bring Legolas to immense heights of pleasure. If he had the artistic hand to draw or paint and the vivid colors to do it, he fancied he could put on parchment a fair facsimile of the Elf’s cobalt blue eyes, including every golden fleck along the outer irises that caused them to glitter in the low light of a fire.

For his whole life, Aragorn had studied the Prince. In his youth, he had yearned to mimic Legolas’ stateliness, cheer, and adroitness at warcraft. In his adult years and especially in the last few months, Aragorn had learnt and studied every bit of the Elf’s body as an attentive lover might, yes; more importantly, though, he had come to know Legolas’ mind and heart better than he ever had – perhaps better than anyone else knew the Silvan Prince.

 _I will not allow this. We will burn everything. The house, the barn, the crops, and the village, if I must. And then, if Elise has not moved on to the Halls of Awaiting, I will burn all of Eriador,_ he threatened uselessly, for in truth, his anger outweighed his capabilities, and there was little he could do except stick to their plan from earlier – and hope and pray.

“Estel?” Kalin called to him from behind.

The Ranger slowed, realizing he had been stalking rapidly through the fallow field to no point in particular. Turning back to the sentry, he found Elladan, Elrohir, Jakob, Reana, Wendt, and Kalin all following closely behind him. The Adan paused to see what Kalin wanted, but could guess what the Silvan intended to say. So quickly had he walked that they were already beyond the immediacy of the horrid smell of death and the dirt and busyness of the barnyard and house. Here, in the untilled field’s uncut, withered grass, which was bent over with heavy seeds such that it looked like rolling waves of pale seawater, he would lay his lover down to die.

Within sight but out of reach to their north, there stretched a wide copse of trees, while the creek meandered its way west on the northernmost side of the cops, though Estel could neither see nor hear it from where he stood now. He would have taken his Wood-Elf closer to the coppice in hopes of balming the Elf’s faer with the nature Legolas’ Silvan soul perpetually craved, but Estel didn’t want to be beyond shouting distance of the farmhouse, where they would soon begin their task of destruction. He asked Kalin, “Can Greenleaf hear the trees from here, you think?”

At some point during their walk to the middle of this field, someone had told Kalin of the mud staining his cheeks. Aragorn guessed it to be Reana, for as he waited for his answer, the Elleth doused a cloth with water from her skin and handed it back to Kalin, who had already made use of it and removed much of the mud upon his features. The Wood-Elf perfunctorily wiped at his face some more while answering, “If he can hear anything at all, then yes. It is close enough.”

Aragorn knelt down carefully with his loved burden. Legolas’ breathing hitched when the Ranger twisted the Prince’s torso as he settled him on the ground; the Elf’s eyelids fluttered a bit, and for one brief and brilliant moment, Estel was certain Legolas would awake and he would be able to see his lover’s gaze upon him at least one last time. But the Silvan’s eyes remained firmly shut, his breathing evened out again, and his body stayed perfectly still. _You cannot die, Greenleaf. But you especially cannot die without saying goodbye,_ he tried to reason with the Elf. _You must wake. Just wake for a moment,_ he pled, though he knew that wishing for one moment more with the Prince would never be enough for him, and if he were granted that single moment, the Ranger would immediately wish for another in which to bask in his lover’s graceful presence.

Elladan pulled off his cloak as he came to where his human brother knelt beside his Silvan brother. He rolled the fabric into a makeshift pillow, lifted Legolas’ skull from the ground, and slid it under the Prince’s fair head. Elrohir came to the Prince, as well, and began adjusting the Wood-Elf’s cloak and his own cloak, which Legolas wore still, until the younger Elf was well covered by them. Although the Silvan did not shiver any longer, his pale flesh felt cold under Aragorn’s warm and calloused hands. From how they were all gathered around Legolas, they blocked some of the bright early afternoon sun, which irritated Aragorn for inexplicable reasons. He wanted for Legolas to be as comfortable as possible, and while like other Eldar the Silvan loved the nighttime and the stars most of all, Estel knew Legolas also enjoyed the heat of the sun upon his skin and he hoped perchance Anor might warm his lover’s chilled flesh.

“Stay here with Greenleaf, brother,” Elrohir proposed. Unseen by Aragorn while he walked into the field, the younger twin had first gone to their horses and obtained his and Elladan’s bags before joining the rest of them. He sat these down beside Estel, offering further, “Inside is food, water, and whatever herbs and bandaging you might require for Greenleaf.”

The Ranger settled more comfortably upon the ground, grabbed the strap of one of the twin’s bags, and began rummaging through it. They waited impatiently for him to respond, though Aragorn barely noticed. He pulled out some clean rolls of thick linen – the kind the twins carried for wrapping rather than bandaging – and shifted the cloaks and clothes upon the Prince before him. Without being asked, Elladan and Elrohir helped their Adan brother in binding Legolas’ chest with the cloth. As far as Estel could tell, Legolas had no other injuries save for his tongue, so there was little else to treat. Under the observation of the others – though again, Aragorn paid no attention to anyone but his Elven lover – Estel took more linen, wetted it, and carefully cleaned what blood he could from Legolas’ mouth. During his fall to the ground, the Prince had bitten his tongue deeply. It wasn’t dire and would heal normally, if the Elf were able to live long enough for the healing to happen. When finished with this, he checked as Elladan had checked earlier in looking for blood pooled in the back of the Wood-Elf’s throat, and finding none, he then took to cleaning his lover’s face.

“Aragorn?” his fellow Ranger prompted.

Reluctant to move his gaze away from Legolas, for he feared just a momentary lapse might cause him to miss the Silvan’s final breath, Estel nonetheless gave Jakob his attention. He noticed how most of them stared at him – Reana, Jakob, and Wendt with sympathetic sorrow, and the twins with both resentment and regret. Kalin, however, watched only his Prince.

When he had capped the waterskin and cast aside the bloodied scrap of cloth he’d been using, Estel finally responded to Jakob, asking, “What is it?”

“As Elrohir suggested, you stay here with Legolas. We can set about building the fire and burning the crates,” Jakob offered, but then looked at those around him and questioned hesitantly, “That is, if it is still our plan?”

Earlier, before leaving the schoolhouse, the three brothers had decided to build a bonfire and burn what they found in Elise’s family’s cellar. Estel had declared they ought to first let Legolas try to speak to Elise to discover if the haunt could reverse her curse upon the Elf and Ranger ere they took the drastic measure of burning everything. They had intended to be certain there was no option to save Legolas and Estel’s life before trying to destroy the Adan child’s specter. Now, this was a moot point, for Legolas had tried this, and perchance saved Aragorn’s life by giving his own. Their only hope of saving Legolas before his faer faded entirely was to sever Elise’s ties to the corporeal world; if this also saved Estel, then so be it, but the Adan thought only of Legolas’ unknowing and insentient body lying on the ground beside him. He was not terrified for Legolas nor was he angry – Estel was determined. If there were any chance of saving the Elf, he was willing to take it, and damn the consequences to himself.

“It should be Estel’s choice.” Kalin twisted his muddied rag between his hands a few times before he tossed it onto the ground beside the twins’ bags. The sentry knelt down at his charge’s head. With devoted reverence, the sentry fussed with his Prince’s unbound hair to keep it off the grass. “We cannot save Legolas any longer, I know, and if Elise keeps her word and Estel is spared, then we need only worry about securing the villagers’ safety. Still, it is your life with which we gamble now,” he told Aragorn.

Elladan and Elrohir looked between them, to Kalin, and then to Aragorn. To the twins – and to the others, as well, the Ranger noted sourly – Legolas was a lost cause, so what action they now chose would affect Aragorn more than anyone else, being that he was the only other one who was tainted by the haunt’s touch. Thus, they were making it his decision as to their next course of action. Estel would pay the immediate repercussions for it, after all. If they destroyed the items too soon and thus ended Elise, they terminated any chance of communicating with her again, which would cement Estel’s demise if she had not yet reversed her curse upon him. It could also be true that ending her would bring about his own death, had she not kept her end of Legolas’ bargain, or if her curse was hastened upon her removal from the corporeal world.

They were truly acting on assumptions, guesses, and wishful thinking.

With all this in mind, Elladan again looked to his twin, shared some unspoken agreement between them, and then asked the human, “What do you want to do?”

 _Whatever it takes, Greenleaf. Do not give up yet, meleth nin,_ he pled with the Silvan. Aragorn leant forward and laid his forehead against the side of his lover’s head before planting a chaste kiss upon his temple. _This is not over. You are not over. I will not have it. I will gladly gamble my own life on the chance we might save yours, just as long as in doing so we don’t endanger the villagers further,_ he allowed, as he would not save his lover’s life at the cost of the innocents in the settlement. Besides, Legolas would never forgive him for allowing anyone to come to harm on his behalf.

“Burn everything. Straightaway.” Pausing, the human looked to his brothers, the Silvan, the Noldorin Elleth, Wendt, and then to his fellow Ranger – none of them argued against his wishes. “I know you all believe Greenleaf will die, but I will not give up on saving him. I do not care if Elise keeps her end of Legolas’ bargain and spares me or if forcing her into Mandos’ care hastens the curse upon me,” he explained as he had only just been contemplating. “Burn everything,” he reiterated, “and give Greenleaf a chance to survive.”

Again, his brothers looked to each other. For all his years living with them, Aragorn could rarely discern the meaning behind the silent glances shared between the two identical brothers, but this time, Estel found he didn’t care what they were thinking. He did not doubt they were still angered with him, even if their anger was misplaced. He also did not doubt they were regretful of their earlier condemnation of him. Whether they held him responsible or not was irrelevant, for Estel held himself responsible. Their accusations only solidified his own beliefs. Long had he fought against the notion that his love for the Silvan Prince was the harbinger of many of Legolas’ misfortunes. He had told himself once the Wood-Elf was past his sorrow and the memories of his torment were put behind him, and especially now they had Thranduil’s grudging blessing, he and Legolas could find happiness. For a short while at the lake, they had found this elusive contentment. He would never regret the time he had been gifted with Legolas, but Elrohir and Elladan’s denunciations rang true with Estel, and he saw the wisdom in their reasoning. Thus, he did not waver in his decision and he would not be dissuaded. He owed Legolas.

Aragorn picked up the Prince’s wrist and held it within his hands so that he could feel the Elf’s heartbeat. When after several of these slow, pattering beats no one spoke, he added with finality, “Destroying the items is the best means we have of trying to aid the village, besides being the only hope of saving Greenleaf – no matter how slim a chance it might be. The sooner we start, the better.”

“I wish I could see her. I could talk to Lissie. I could make her see reason,” Wendt murmured. The man removed his leather cap, pushed his spiraled, thick, dark hair back away from his face, and then secured it with the cap again. “There is still her box of treasures at the creek,” the blacksmith reminded them. “None of you knows where Elise hid the box, nor could you find it easily – not without wasting time. As much as I hate to suggest it, we ought to split up. Some of us need to work on burning what’s here, and some of us need to go get the box. I would offer to go alone, but if she tries to defend it and I end up snuffed out, then one of you Elves will survive long enough to get it back to the fire, at least, right?”

 _I had forgotten about the things she has hidden at the creek’s bank._ It would slow down the process for them all to go, but as Wendt said, it seemed unwise for them to split up. However, those at the creek were likely no safer nor more endangered than those who remained, and Estel would not leave Legolas. Nor would Kalin.

“Then you, I, and Elladan will go find her treasure,” Elrohir decided to Wendt. He stood, as did Elladan, and they strode in tandem to Wendt, with the elder twin taking the man by the arm as if to pull him along by force if he hesitated. “Come. Let us take the horses and be back as quickly as possible.”

Without another word, the twins and the blacksmith trotted back to the gate of the houseyard, where they had left the horses tied to the fence. Along with Jakob, Reana, and Kalin, Estel watched in silence as his brothers and the villager mounted rapidly and compelled the horses into a gallop down the beaten dirt path leading to the slab-paved road. As angry as he was with the twins, Estel feared for his brothers’ safety and found himself praying, _Keep them safe, please, Elbereth. Let no one else be touched by Elise._

The resounding clattering of the horses’ hooves became inaudible; a moment later, Reana stepped forward to ask Aragorn, “What do you need of me?”

“There is seasoned firewood stacked within the barn,” Estel recalled from his venture inside with Legolas the morning before. He asked of the Elleth, “If you and Jakob will gather enough to start a bonfire in the yard, once the fire is going, we will carry out the crates and burn what we can.”

The she-Elf nodded and took off at once, aware again – as were they all – that Elise might be around and of danger, but willing nonetheless to do as Estel bid. Jakob needed no prompting to follow his Chieftain’s command, either, and stayed on Reana’s heels to aid the Noldorin Elleth. It might have been unfair of him to put Reana and Jakob to work while he sat here, but Aragorn could not yet find the will to leave Legolas’ side. Kalin did not ask what he could do, nor would Aragorn ask anything of him. The sentry was beside his Prince, as was his right and his place, and Estel knew to pry the elder Silvan from the younger would break Kalin’s heart, for the sentry wanted to be there when his Prince died. Estel felt the same, of course, though when his mind wandered to the possibility of Legolas’ death, he forced it back to thoughts of how best to see their aims accomplished.

 _We should scour the house for anything that might possibly be from the tombs. Wendt said Jenafer wouldn’t allow Emler to put his treasures around the house, but he might have something hidden away in the loft where he slept, or there might be some knife hilt or bauble about the place._ He brought Legolas’ hand to his face; Aragorn carded the Elf’s fingertips through the beard on his chin in mimicry of what the Wood-Elf often did in caressing the man’s face. When he heard a hushed sniffle, Aragorn was drawn from his thoughts and looked to Kalin.

The elder Silvan was busying himself in trying to make his Prince comfortable, should the younger Silvan be capable of feeling discomfort now – or ever again – by rearranging the laegel’s legs and firmly tucking in the cloaks about Legolas’ body once more. Kalin had found a tub of medicinal unguent in one of the twin’s satchels and now took to spreading a bit over his Prince’s lips. Legolas had not been without water for so long that his mouth and lips were dried out or chapped, but it seemed the sentry was eager to find any means of palliating his charge.

Without prelude, Kalin spoke his rambling thoughts aloud, “I will bury him, I think, and not burn him upon a pyre. I will bury him in the woods somewhere, under a sapling, far from the village so the tree will not be in danger of being cut down for lumber or firewood. And somewhere easy to find again, in case King Thranduil wishes to see the place where his son’s body rests.”

“Stop. Stop speaking of his death as if it has happened already,” he barked harshly. The Ranger enjoyed Kalin’s company, considered him a friend, and would not normally wish him harm, but at this moment, Estel wanted nothing more than to thrash the Elf. “Legolas is not dead. Greenleaf will not die.”

When Kalin looked up to Estel, the swell of tears in the sentry’s eyes brimmed over to paint slick lines down his freshly washed face. Befuddled, the Silvan shook his head at Aragorn. “I may not be as close to him as are you or Elladan or Elrohir, but I have spent Legolas’ entire life watching over him. I am well acquainted with his faer. I have tended to it for years, trying to keep him happy and safe. And right now, I can feel his faer fading. It does you no good and him no service to deny it, Estel. Legolas is dying.”

Aragorn crawled closer to his Greenleaf until his knees were against the Elf’s side. He hugged his lover’s arm to his chest, which was tense with the utter panic the sentry’s declaration caused.

“We should not fear his dying. He does not suffer,” Kalin tried to comfort the human, though Kalin appeared comfortless with his blotchy, tearstained, and bereaved visage. “He will be in Mandos’ care, with our Queen. His faer can heal there. His sorrow will be alleviated. He will suffer no more.”

Something about how Kalin spoke of this told Aragorn that Kalin intended to join his Prince in the Halls of Awaiting as soon as was feasible – perhaps soon after taking word to Thranduil of Thranduilion’s death. At one point in time, this might have comforted the Ranger, but not today.

Kalin continued in a voice feigning serenity but failing pitifully, “And he is able to die with his friends beside him. With _you_ beside him, Estel. He will have a peaceful death, here in this field, close enough to hear the lifesong of the forest. Perhaps even he will last until the sun sets, and he can die under the stars.”

The soft grass whispering against his trousers, the sun shining blindingly bright in his eyes, and the breeze blowing the sweet smell of living things into his face and through his hair made Estel think,   _Kalin is right. At least Greenleaf is outside, amongst the living things, and with loved ones should he truly…_

With a violent shake of his head, Aragorn ended that thought before he could finish it. Considering Legolas’ death was traitorous. It was akin to accepting that his lover would die, and this the Ranger would not do.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Managed to get something edited! Hurrah! 
> 
> Thanks for reading, dears. :)

Although he spent most of his time watching Legolas, Estel also kept a careful watch over Reana and Jakob, who in the distance were doing as he had asked of them by gathering the lengths of seasoned firewood they had found in the barn and with this wood, expertly building a pyramid like structure that would become their bonfire.

He worried Elise may be near. He worried she might suss out what they intended and try to put a stop to it, if she were even capable of guessing her current state could be ended – that is, _if_ it could be ended. He worried the Wood-Elf lying before him might expire before they had incinerated every conceivable object related to Emler’s time as a tomb looter. Aragorn’s worry consumed his every thought, breath, and heartbeat, such that his entire being had become a bundle of raw nerves.

Across from where he sat by Legolas’ prone body, Kalin softly hummed some tune sounding like a berceuse but which rang in Estel’s aching, distracted head like a death knell. Aragorn did not know the song. As wont as Elves were to sing, Estel had heard many of the Eldar’s songs in his lifetime and had often taken comfort from their pleasant melodies, though not today. Today, Kalin’s humming was wearing on the man’s anxious mind. Estel was quite certain Kalin did not even know he hummed, for the elder Silvan looked down upon the younger one with dolorous raptness, his gaze never once seeming to leave Legolas’ slack features. Only because he knew how hard Kalin was taking his Prince’s imminent and apparently unavoidable demise did Aragorn not ask the sentry to quiet his humming. For Kalin, who had devoted his entire life to Legolas, this was not just watching a friend or Prince die, but watching his life’s purpose come to an end. It would wholly devastate the sentry.

A flash of movement caught his eye; he looked up to find Jakob trotting his way over to where he and the two Wood-Elves were in the fallow field. As his fellow Watcher did not look distressed and Reana appeared just fine off in the distance by their unlit, waiting heap of wood, Estel tamped down the immediate reaction of fear to see Jakob running towards them. Kalin’s head moved slightly towards the sound of Jakob’s footsteps though he did not turn to look at the man’s approach, but kept his fervent regard upon his Prince.

“The fire is laid. It needs only to be lit,” the fiery-haired Ranger told his Chieftain in a rush of words once he was close enough not to have to shout to be heard. Jakob and Reana had completed their task as quickly as they possibly could have done, since they understood Estel’s need for haste. Jakob slowed to walk the rest of the way to his Chieftain and with his knuckles, he scratched the underside of his chin as he looked down at Legolas, a grimace crossing his haggard visage to find the Woodland Prince’s condition unchanged. When Estel did not respond, the man continued, “Reana found some lamp oil in the house and poured it over the wood. We thought it best to make the top of it flat, so we can lay the items atop it to watch them burn – to make sure they burn all up. And Reana even searched the house for anything similar to the items in the crates. I told her it didn’t matter if it was Emler’s treasure or not. We’d set fire to it all and hope Wendt doesn’t care, but if he does care that we’ve burnt up his family’s possessions, he can take it up with me.”

Aragorn nodded in agreement of this good idea. Even without knowing whether torching Emler’s treasured items would work, the Ranger found himself eager to watch the ill-gotten goods burn, for while they could not even know if the stolen things were the cause of Elise’s condition, Aragorn felt sure some item of them was responsible. And like Jakob, he would rather be safe than sorry. If Wendt took exception to their incinerating items not of Emler’s horde of stolen goods, then Estel would tell the man to kiss his arse. He was eager for a fight, anyway. Sitting around helplessly with no true foe to rage against was not the kind of battle Aragorn was accustomed to, and besides, in Aragorn’s thinking, Legolas’ life was too important to chance just to save material goods. If nothing else, Estel would see to it Wendt was compensated somehow – while Estel had little to call his own, his foster father or the Elvenking could offer recompense.

Glancing back to the bonfire, he no longer saw the she-Elf, and worried aloud, “Where did she go?”

“Told me she wanted to give the house and barn another once over, and then the bodies.” Jakob crouched down near his Chieftain. One of Jakob’s hands crept out towards the Wood-Elf’s wrist, as if to gauge for himself whether Legolas still lived by feeling for his heartbeat, but a mordant glance from Kalin stopped this well-intentioned gesture at once. Instead, Jakob cleared his throat and asked, “Are we waiting for your brothers and the blacksmith? I see no reason to delay, but it is up to you, Aragorn. It’s your lover’s life and your life on the hook, here. Your decision.”

As if he could see Elladan, Elrohir, and Wendt from where he sat, Aragorn looked towards the copse of trees nearby, which ran between the field in which they sat now and the creek by which he and Legolas had journeyed on their way to the village the day before today. His mind, however, stuttered as he realized what Jakob had said. _My lover,_ he repeated to himself, looked down to the insentient Wood-Elf without truly seeing him, and then back to the coppice. The Elf and Ranger had not been careful in hiding their affection for each other after learning they were soon to die from Elise’s curse; so, of course, Jakob knew Estel and Legolas were lovers. Still, Aragorn was taken aback by the open-minded ease with which Jakob called Legolas his Chieftain’s lover. Estel had expected for Jakob to show some disgust upon learning of Estel’s choice of a male mate, which was typically intolerable amongst the Edain. In fact, Estel knew of men and women who had been slain by their kith and kin merely for being who they were born to be, for loving who their heart chose. Yet, Jakob did not seem to care, or at least, he was thoughtfully hiding his true feelings for the aggrieved Estel’s benefit.

“Aragorn?” his fellow Adan pressed when he saw Estel’s faraway, vacant gaze. “What would you have us do?”

The Adan shook his morose thoughts from his head and tried to concentrate. _The twins have been gone over an hour already. On horseback, it would surely not take but a few hours to get to where Elise hid her box, if it was anywhere near where we found her body._ He looked down at Legolas again. The Prince had not moved, sighed, fluttered his eyelids, or twitched a single muscle the whole time Elladan, Elrohir, and Wendt had been gone, and with Kalin’s certainty that Legolas’ faer was soon to be cleaved from the Silvan’s rhaw, Aragorn wanted to wait no longer. He heaved a great sigh of indecision, which after doing so made him feel older than his relatively few years.

“Let us not wait another moment. Greenleaf may not last until the twins return with Elise’s box.” He picked up his lover’s hand and pressed it to the side of his bewhiskered face; when the Elf’s fingers curled slightly upon Aragorn’s shifting of the Silvan’s palm, he wanted to believe Legolas was the cause of this, though he knew better than to hope it was true. With another regretful sigh, Aragorn released his lover’s hand and moved away so he could rise upon unsteady legs. He asked of Kalin, “I am leaving to help Jakob and Reana. If Greenleaf’s condition changes at all, call out for me, please.”

“I will, Estel,” the distracted sentry agreed. As he had done repeatedly over the last hour, Kalin traced his fingertips over his charge’s brow, cheekbones, and chin, and lightly kneaded his Prince’s shoulders and arms – offering this brotherly affection to Legolas in the hopes of the younger Silvan’s declining mind and body finding some comfort from it.

He began to walk away with Jakob ere he stopped, strode back to Kalin, and cautioned the sentry, “If something we burn is the cause of Elise’s state, then I am not sure what will happen upon its destruction. The curse upon us could be broken as her soul is sent to Mandos, and Legolas might awake just then,” he offered as the positive prospect, but countered with the more likely and less hopeful possibility, “or it might only hasten the curse, causing Greenleaf and I to die immediately, or cause no change in either of us at all until her curse runs its natural course and we die from it.”

For a brief moment, Kalin tore his gaze away from his Prince and set his zealous blue eyes upon the Edain, instead. “I hope for your sake it ends the curse, Estel, but it is too late for Legolas either way. His faer hangs on to his rhaw by a thread.”

Kalin turned back to Legolas and began anew his humming and tracing of his Prince’s dark brows, thereby dismissing the two Rangers with this utter certainty of Legolas’ death. Jakob’s hand snatched Aragorn’s upper arm, which he used to tug his Chieftain away before Estel lost his temper and quarreled with the devastated, downtrodden Wood-Elf guard. He accepted this guidance towards the house and barn and forced himself not to argue with the inconsolable sentry. Bowing his head in despair at the mere mention of the likelihood of Legolas’ death, Estel began away with Jakob to the unlit bonfire.

 _Just a while longer, Greenleaf,_ he spoke as if the Elf could hear him. _Hang on for a little while longer._

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_“Can you not see I am too busy for your childishness, Estel?” he baited the young man, lifting his voice so the human could hear him over the sound of the Bruinen._

_Estel flashed Legolas a wicked, ephemeral grin from where he reclined on the riverbank. Speaking just as loudly, Estel set his youthful but no longer boyish features into a false frown and replied, “All I see is you, Master Elf, combing your hair as though you were a duck preening its feathers in the water. You can do that on the shore, can’t you? So I can hear you, at least, without having to shout?” the human said a bit too loudly in mock annoyance._

_Legolas tried to look affronted but found it hard to feign anger when his Adan friend’s eyes stared at him with such jolly mischief glittering in their silver depths. “I_ do not _preen,” he corrected the young Adan. “I am merely fond of cleanliness – a habit I had hoped to instill in you while you were young, but one I see you have forsaken in favor of slovenliness. You have grown up to be unkempt, just like your incorrigible brothers,” he teased, and in doing so, stretched the truth more than a bit, for Elladan and Elrohir were not prone to shabbiness, as the Wood-Elf currently claimed in his joshing._

_He remembered this day very well, for it was one of his favorite memories – one he had returned to often during the worst moments of his time in Mirkwood after he had hewn the flesh from his thigh, when he had languished in grief from the wrongs done to him and the acute agony caused by the absence of his Adan lover. Several years had passed since last the Prince had been able to travel to Imladris; though relatively speaking, it was not such a long time for him to remain away from the hidden vale. However, since meeting the newest addition to Elrond’s family, Legolas had made an effort to travel to the valley more often than usual, as he had not wanted to miss seeing the young Adan child grow into adulthood. Earlier this morning, when Estel had come with his foster family to greet the Prince and his sentries upon their arrival in the valley, Legolas had found that the gangly, diminutive, and talkative youth Estel had been that first summer of their meeting was gone, only to be replaced by an lanky, leanly muscled, and thoughtful young man. Despite being old enough to be considered an adult amongst his own kind, Estel had forsaken all pretense of maturity and did not give his foster family a chance to greet first the Prince whom he held in high regard. Estel had run forward and welcomed the Silvan with a boisterous hug, thereby taking Legolas off his feet in his animated exuberance – and act that had incited the twins and their father to laugh at the young man’s excitement but caused his sentries to tense at seeing the human treating their Prince with such familiarity, though they had relaxed upon hearing Legolas’ laughter. Indeed, since the laegel’s arrival in Rivendell this morning, Estel had not let Legolas leave his sight, nor did the Prince wish to do so, although the twins had long ago wandered off to attend to their father’s patients on his behalf._

_His Minyatar often said if Legolas were nowhere to be found, then all one had to do to locate him was to check the river, for if the Wood-Elf could have his way, he would while away his life in whatever body of water he could find deep enough in which to swim. And so it was that after spending time speaking and laughing of what had happened in their separate lives while apart, the two friends had decided to do what the Elf loved best, and swam in the Bruinen this fine early evening. Shirtless and bootless, the Adan had his long legs stretched out before him, crossed at the ankle, while his upper body was leant back, his weight resting upon his flattened palms. A shadow of a beard graced the man’s face, which in itself had surprised the Elf when seeing the Adan again after the extended absence from Estel. When last he had visited, Legolas could detect only a few dark hairs upon his friend’s chin. The spattering of dark hair covering Estel’s chest was new, as well, and though all these signs of the Adan’s maturity were expected to happen eventually, Legolas found himself somewhat saddened to think Estel’s childhood was over, for Legolas had enjoyed the youngling very much and he did not like the physical reminder of Estel’s humanity, since it portended the inevitable end to the mortal’s life._

_Estel did not respond to the Silvan’s taunt about being unkempt, though he once more gave the Prince a brief, mischievous smirk. Legolas stood in the shallow water, equally shirtless and bootless, and utterly sodden. Because a recent thunderstorm in the mountains had mucked up the Bruinen with leaves and small twigs, the Elf was picking said debris from his long hair before he joined the man upon the bank. He could have done as Estel asked and cleaned his hair while resting on the shore with the Adan, but it amused him to pester his friend by not acquiescing to his suggestion of doing so. The sun shone down upon the surface of the water – which was relatively calm here in the shallow, broad part of the Bruinen before the falls – and caused the surface of the river to shimmer with each ripple Legolas created by his movements._

_Overall, the Prince had led a happy life. His years were tainted with struggle, agonizing memories, and painful loss just as was anyone else’s life, but he had inherited his mother’s good cheer rather than his father’s cynicism, along with his mother’s love of the simple things Eru’s creation had to offer his children, so despite the hard times through which he had thus far persevered, Legolas felt blessed. And in this very moment of standing in the river with Estel waiting merrily on the bank, Legolas had felt more blessed than ever before. It was for this reason he had often returned to this memory – to breathe life into his drowning faer when it was whelmed by the maelstrom of sorrow brought about by his torment in Lake-town and the excruciating months thereafter._

_Quite aware that he was reliving this moment, Legolas’ mind regaled him with thoughts the likes of which he had not held at the time – that is, the Wood-Elf took notice of Aragorn’s fine musculature, which was much more defined than it had been when Estel was younger but not quite as abundant as it would be in a few years, after the man had spent a great deal of time practicing with his broadsword and living in the wilds. The Prince saw the water dripping down Estel’s broad chest and glistening along his flat, muscled belly, while droplets of the river’s water glinted in his wavy chestnut hair. The laegel also noted how Estel’s wet trousers clung to his lithe legs – especially at the nexus between them, where the cloth did little to hide what laid underneath. It would be years before he would come to know intimately the satisfying length and girth of the manhood under the cloth, but seeing it now under the river-damp cloth sent a shiver down his lower back. At the time, the Silvan had not seen how masculinely beautiful the Adan was, for Estel had still seemed like a child to him and was like a brother, besides, but as he recalled this moment now, Legolas could appreciate how handsome his Adan lover was when younger._

_Idly, the youthful Adan – not yet a Ranger but already one to venture into the wilds as often as he could – sorted through the tall weeds around him until he found something of interest. Estel smiled to himself in delight, as he had found a wild herb of his liking, and Legolas watched with his own private smile as the Adan popped a few leaves into his mouth._ Mint, _he remembered as he observed Estel chew on the herb._ He found mint that afternoon. Elladan and Elrohir later teased him about smelling better than he had all summer.

_Seeing the Adan chew the wild mint leaves caused a newer memory to surface, one that had been recently made, and one that tore him from the artless pleasure of reminiscing about this simple moment with Aragorn._

Estel found wild mint while we were at the lake, as well. He used it to clean his mouth and teeth then just as he is doing now.

_Legolas recalled packing their belongings while the Adan ground the mint leaves with his portable tin mortar and pestle. He was reminded of how he had gone to Estel to fuss at the man for being sluggardly while Legolas did all the work, but instead of an argument, he and the Ranger had found pleasure together using the mint leaves’ oily water. As wonderful as this reminiscence was, Legolas’ mind scrambled to move beyond it. There was something important he had forgotten. He needed to call it to mind before he was lost in his memories yet again. He nearly did forget once more when his mind lingered upon the pleasantly itchy sensation the mint had created within his innermost flesh – an itch the Ranger had scratched with his shaft, and one that had brought them both to an intense climax of their shared enjoyment. He pushed his mind past this prurience until he thought of walking in the woods with Aragorn, who trod along behind him. And then, Legolas remembered when he stopped short upon seeing a diaphanous, dark shadow of a girl child standing by a fallen tree’s trunk, her madly glowing, rubicund eyes piercing through his hazy thoughts with cutting clarity._

Elise. Sweet Varda, you have forgotten all about Elise, you idiot, _the Prince lambasted himself in fear for his friends. He stood before the girl, just as he had a few days ago, but his mind was clearing and focusing in a way he had not been able to attain since he had fallen into unconsciousness and subsequently into this despondent fading of his faer. He encouraged himself,_ Think, Legolas. Wake. You have to tell them what she showed you. You have to tell them of the box, of the splinter. It is important. It may save their lives, _he continued as if his words alone might stop his faer’s split from his rhaw and thus end his dying._ Stop lying here, waiting to breathe your last. There is still work to be done.

_Wendt had told the others of the girl’s hiding spot for the treasures she had nicked from her grandfather; Wendt had come with them on the promise of showing them. That box – the one Elise showed him – was surely the cause of her death, the Silvan was certain. From what she disclosed to him in her vision, she had run her fingers over that crumbling, old box, and a splinter had slid into her finger._

_But his traitorous mind – eager to offer his faer succor during his slow death – eschewed the memory of Elise and returned Legolas to the Bruinen, where he once again found himself watching Estel chew mint leaves. He knew what the young man would say next. Estel would ask him if Legolas was finally done preening, and if so, if the Elf would like to go back to the house to eat the evening meal in the great hall or try to find the twins and have something sent up to the family wing where they could eat in private, perhaps with Elrond, if he was done with his meetings. As Legolas’ mind valiantly tried to replay the soothingly benign events of that day, the Prince fought against the knowledge of what came next, of what Estel would say, and of how he would respond. That day so many years ago, Legolas had stayed in the river, pretending not to be able to hear the human’s query, until Aragorn gave up and joined him with a splash of leafy water at the Silvan’s face. The two friends had then decided to determine what to do next by ‘racing’ limbs in the river to see whose limb would travel fastest following the Bruinen’s current. Again, Legolas nearly lost himself to the comfort this memory brought, and thus nearly forgot the imperativeness of his purpose._

_Legolas did not mind to dream as he died. And yet, he desperately knew he needed to wake for just a few moments from this cloying albeit pleasant deluge of memories; and so, the Legolas inside his memory did not play along with the events of his recollection, but fought to walk to the shore and away from where Estel stood, a lively smile upon his kind face and limb in hand to begin their race. With each of the Elf’s steps towards the shore, the mild flow of the Loudwater seemed to become turbulent and dangerous, the water thick and boggy like a morass, and the once shimmering surface became black as tar – the river struggled against Legolas’ leaving it concomitant to the Elf fighting against his being swept along the undercurrent of this memory._

I have to tell him. I have to tell them of the box, _he repeated to himself as he willed away the tug of the water, of the tow of his fading faer’s desire to revel in happier times during the last of his moments. How easy it would be to let the river take him, to let it soothe him back into complacency by accepting his role in this memory._

 _Whereas in the real life event upon which this memory was based, the water had come only to his waist and ought to have been lower the closer he got to the shore, Legolas found himself floundering, his feet becoming hindered by the quagmire beneath them, and the river’s murky surface soon began to lap at his chin._ Stop this, _he said as if he might reason with his fading faer._ I cannot die just yet. I must tell them. _It was then that as his reverie-self, Legolas closed his eyes in frustration – when he opened them, the Prince found he was no longer in the Bruinen, but sitting with his back against a rock wall. As had been the Loudwater while he resisted its miring current, this water was also filled with debris; however, the mephitic smell of the water in which he was now caught was as familiar to him as the Bruinen’s sweet, uncontaminated scent, and at once, Legolas knew just where he was._

Please no. Anywhere but here. Of all places to dream of as I die… _the Elf rued, selfishly wishing he had left well enough alone and stayed with Estel in the Bruinen._

_Legolas was by himself, in the dark, and utterly helpless – just as he had been while caught in the pit in the back of the Troll’s cave. And when he opened his eyes, in the pit was exactly where he found himself. Of course, it being pitch black, he could not see this to determine if it were true, but he did not need to see to know to what memory his fading faer had brought him. He looked up in hopes of seeing Estel on the ledge overhead, just as he had imagined the Adan being there when most he needed the man weeks ago, but above there was only more darkness._

I am not in the Troll cave, _he tried to coax himself into calming, lest in his terror he forget his purpose behind struggling against these memories and thus never break free of their hold upon him._ I am trapped in my own failing mind and dying body, not in this pit. I need only to awaken.

_He used the sheer wall behind him to stand, felt underfoot the bones of corpses long since decayed, and could even taste the foulness of the water from where it had slipped inside his mouth during his temporary insentience – just as it had that day he’d actually been trapped within the pit and nearly drowned while intoxicated by the milk of the poppy. Knowing this was just a dream of sorts did not serve to dampen the growing despair inside him. When living through this, when in the pit and thinking he would die from enervation or sorrow, Legolas had barely kept himself sane and eventually endured because of his love for Estel, because he wanted to live if only to ensure he could try to keep Estel safe. He pressed his dream-self’s forehead against the wall of the pit, hoping to find within himself the same fortitude to do now as he had then, to persist to be of use to Estel and the others._

Wake up, _he pled._ Just for a moment, and then you can die. Please, Legolas. Please, wake up.

_His time in the Troll cave’s pit was hazy enough, but he doubted very much he had spent any of that awful time singing or humming. Yet, that’s exactly what he was hearing right now. Moreover, he knew the tune the kind, gentle voice was humming. When he was but an Elfling, his Naneth had sung the words to which this tune was attached. He thought at first his faer was offering him a way out of the pit by switching to a different memory, but he could still feel the stagnant, bone-filled water around his legs, could not see anything because of the pervasive dark, and his remembrance of the terrified hopelessness he had felt was not yet ameliorated. But the longer the humming went on, the more at peace the Elf felt, until he became certain his end was finally upon him, and the dark would soon be riven by light to show him his Naneth before him, her arms open and welcoming him to the Halls of Awaiting._

No, not yet, _he pled some more, though only half-heartedly this time, for the thought of seeing his mother amidst this shadowy and watery tomb would be just as welcome as had been his hallucination of Estel weeks ago when he had truly stood in the mephitic water, wondering how long he would suffer before he died. Believing his eyes were already open, the Prince groaned in frustration, shut his eyes, and then opened his eyes again, only to find that instead of the darkness of the pit, there was a blindingly bright light overhead. He expected to see Estel’s apparition or his mother’s ghost on the ledge above him in a facsimile of the events occurring weeks ago._

_Surprisingly, the Silvan soon realized it was not Estel nor his mother who looked down upon him, but Kalin._

“My Prince?”


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, this is the second half of the last chapter, which I had not intended to split, but did just to post something. This explains why it is kind of short. So, anyway, hope ya'll are doing well. Don't hate me for this chapter. Hope you like it.

Legolas blinked rapidly and squinted his eyes against Anor’s luminosity. Noticing this, Kalin shifted to hover over his charge’s face in an effort to block the sunlight. Beneath his body was a thick carpet of grass, causing the laegel to realize he lay in a field. The sun overhead told the Prince it was past midday. A drop of rain hit the younger Elf’s nose, followed by another upon his left cheek, which made him think distractedly, _How can it be raining when the sun is so bright?_

He blinked again, this time keeping his eyes closed for a long moment ere he opened them again when Kalin entreated, “No, my Prince. Please, stay awake.”

_Not rain. Tears._

Kalin was weeping. The younger Wood-Elf opened his mouth to respond but only a strange, rattling exhale emanated from his throat. He could taste blood in his mouth, while his sore and swollen tongue felt to be coated in sawdust. His head ached fiercely. His torso was wrapped so securely he could barely expand his chest to breathe, such that when Legolas tried to pull in enough air to clear his mind of its haze, he inhaled sharply but shallowly from the pain this simple action wrought. The unexpected inundation of excruciation caused the Prince’s eyes to snap shut and a low moan to roll from between his tightly clenched teeth.

_Why did you wake up, you foolish Elf?_ he belabored himself, his purpose in warning the others of the haunt’s box cast aside for the nonce. His agony pushed out all other thoughts from his mind except how he might end the pain erupting from his chest. _Why didn’t I just stay asleep?_

Kalin begged shamelessly of the younger Silvan, “No, please. Open your eyes. Do not die so easily, my Prince. Stay awake.”

Obediently, Legolas opened his eyes again to look up into his faithful sentry’s tear streaked face. Unable to use his voice just yet, he mouthed the word ‘water’ and hoped Kalin would understand him. Luckily for the Prince, Kalin understood just fine and grabbed a flask of water near at hand. Kalin uncapped the container before he slid a hand under the back of Legolas’ neck to lift the laegel’s head from Elladan’s rolled up cloak. The guard murmured, “Just a little at a time,” though he spoke so softly he could have been instructing himself rather than Legolas. “Not too much.”

The water was tepid, tasted like it had been inside the flask for days and thus had picked up the metallic tang of the metal container, and Kalin refused to let more than a dribble pass through the Prince’s lips before he pulled it away to give Legolas the chance to swallow – and yet, the water was ambrosial, so welcome was it to the younger Wood-Elf’s parched throat and desiccated mouth. He tried to lift his hand to grasp the flask for himself, to force Kalin’s hand into tilting more water into his gullet, but Legolas did not have the strength just yet to do more than flutter his fingers.

_Am I so injured I cannot move? Or is this the final stage of Elise’s curse?_ he wondered of the feebleness of his body and the slow cognation of his mind. He could recall falling from the stoop of the farmhouse with Kalin landing atop him; he remembered the distinctive snap of bone and simultaneous outburst of agony in his chest. Now he thought back on it, Legolas could only be glad to have earlier remained conscious long enough for Elise to affirm her agreement to his offer, as it seemed he would soon die and be unable to bargain with the haunt further. _How long have I been insentient? And where is Estel? Is he well?_ The Wood-Elf suddenly feared the Adan had perished. He could think of no other reason for the human’s absence, as he was otherwise certain Aragorn would never wish to leave him when knowing Legolas was soon to die. As soon as he had enough water and could cope well enough to speak, he would ask Kalin of the Ranger and the others.

His sentry must’ve finally believed Legolas had imbibed enough water, for he pulled the flask away long before Legolas’ thirst was truly sated. Smoothly, the sentry laid Legolas’ head back upon his makeshift pillow of Elladan’s rolled cloak, capped the flask, set it aside, and then with the sleeve of his tunic, tenderly dabbed at a trickle of water on his Prince’s chin.

“I have never been more glad to be proven wrong,” Kalin told the younger Elf, his good cheer showing how the sentry must think his Prince’s wakefulness was indicative of his will to live or his recuperation, rather than Legolas’ last-ditch effort to be of aid to his loved ones before he passed. With his relief clear upon his woeful but smiling, pallid face, Kalin admitted, “I didn’t think you would ever waken again, my Prince. Estel will be ecstatic to see you have…” Kalin began before he trailed off, having just recalled he was supposed to call out for the Ranger should Legolas’ condition change. Swiftly, Kalin surveyed the area around the farmhouse and then returned his attention to his Prince. He shook his head in indecision, telling the younger Elf, “They must be in the cellar fetching the crates out for the fire. I cannot see any of them. I don’t think he could hear me under the house, but stay awake, my Prince, and when he comes out, I will call for him.”

_Then Estel is alive still. Thank you, Ilúvatar._

As had the others held their doubts, Legolas also feared Elise might not keep her end of the bargain. Of course, just because Aragorn currently lived did not mean Elise had or would do as she promised and remove the curse, nor did it provide safety for the rest of his motley lot of friends and acquaintances, but the Prince hoped he might convince Elise to end her terrorization of the village once he was dead and thus doomed to remain as her companion – as an apparitional shadow of his physical self.

_I cannot die just yet,_ he worried when the thought occurred to him, _because if I die before dark, then I will dissipate just like the Edain whom she has killed during the day. If I am to see Estel and the villagers safe, I cannot die before nightfall._

How he might manage this was beyond him, since he felt to be on the brink of death already. Moreover, he had promised Elise to remain as her friend forever. If he lived until sunset, died in the safety of dark, and existed as a bodiless spirit tonight, would he not just fade upon the dawn of tomorrow’s morn?

Having no answers to these queries and his head hurting too much to ponder it right now, Legolas cleared his throat with a throbbing, harsh cough, and then whispered brokenly, “Everyone is safe?”

Kalin grinned broadly just at hearing his Prince speak, as if this were another sign Legolas might be on the mend. Happily, the sentry shifted to lean over Legolas to block better the bright sun from his charge’s face, and then answered, “As far as I know, yes, they are all safe. Reana, Jakob, and Estel are about to burn what they could find of Emler’s things. Elladan and Elrohir are off to the creek with the blacksmith to locate any items Elise might have spirited away.”

Again, he prayed, _Thank you, Ilúvatar. Keep them safe. Help Elise to keep her word so Estel might live._

Kalin placed a hand on the other side of Legolas’ torso, by which he supported his weight. Few people could crowd Legolas so without the Prince becoming uncomfortable by it – especially after his recent torment in the last half-year or so – but he was unbothered by Kalin’s proximity. When his sentry used his free hand to pick up a lock of Legolas’ unbound hair from off the younger Silvan’s shoulder and began fiddling with it absently, the laegel’s wavering attention wandered.

Months ago, after his and Aragorn’s run in with the merchants Sven and Cort along the trade route near Lake-town, when Legolas had fallen into despair and could not be woken, Estel had diligently cared for and protected the Elf while travelling from Eryn Galen to Rivendell for Elrond’s expertise. When Legolas awoke for the first time in over a week, the Elf and Ranger had been in the High Pass of the Misty Mountains. Aragorn had laid the Wood-Elf down in the withering grasses of an open meadow and sat above Legolas much as Kalin did now – that is, worriedly hovering above the Prince while idly playing with his hair. The recollection of this memory was akin to stepping into quicksand for the Wood-Elf. When he closed his eyes, he could see Aragorn lingering over him rather than Kalin, and his failing mind – so eager to quit its harried sorrow and its light fading away like how a candle’s flame dims slowly before it gutters out entirely – began to sink into the comfort of this agreeable memory.

Unthinkingly closing his eyes, Legolas groaned when a hitch in his breathing caused his broken ribs to grate inside his torso.

“I am sorry, Legolas,” his sentry began, his words spilling out as if he feared he might not have the chance to finish saying them ere his Prince died. “I am sorry for hurting you. It was an accident,” he heard Kalin say.

Legolas forced his eyes open and tried to concentrate upon the guard, clinging to his friend’s voice and face as if Kalin were a limb by which to pull himself free of the miring memory threatening to pull him back under. Looking down upon his Prince, the sentry wanted for Legolas to speak, to forgive him, to clear the air between them so he could appease his guilty conscience. And the young Silvan would not deny his guard this, as he no more wanted to die with Kalin angry at him than he wanted for Kalin to believe his Prince was upset with him. He shook his head slightly to forfend his guard’s remorse, but Kalin was not finished.

Twirling Legolas’ lock of hair around his finger, Kalin looked anywhere but directly at his Prince’s face as he continued, “I am sorry I troubled you earlier. Please forgive me. I did not mean to argue with Estel or presume to know what is best for you. I ought not to have fussed at you like you are a child. I wanted only to protect you, to keep you safe, as ever I have wanted, my Prince,” the sentry beseeched effusively.

Legolas smiled at Kalin and inserted before Kalin could find something else for which to apologize. He mumbled out quietly but firmly, “Enough, my friend. You are forgiven.”

Returning his Prince’s smile and finally meeting Legolas’ gaze, Kalin sighed in relief, his heavy heart only slightly less burdened now that he had Legolas’ forgiveness, but lighter all the same. Legolas loved his sentry as much as he loved his twin Noldorin brothers and his Minyatar, like how he loved his father, the memory of his Naneth, his home in the Greenwood, and his fellow Silvan. Whatever anger he had felt for Kalin was nothing in comparison to the need now to forgive Kalin, but also to be forgiven by him. He could not die peacefully elsewise.

Struggling to speak, Legolas cleared his throat again, which then became another painful cough. A moment later, the flask of water was pressed to his lips and Kalin allowed him more than just a dribble this time. Legolas drank gratefully and deeply, and it soothed the burning dryness in his mouth. After Kalin wiped the trickle of water from Legolas’ chin yet again, the younger Elf was able to speak, saying, “I am sorry.” He muttered in a harsh and trembling voice, “For my anger and outburst.”

“No, there is nothing to forgive – ” the sentry tried to stave off his Prince’s apology.

When the younger Elf began to talk again, Kalin stopped speaking so he would not miss a word of what his Prince told him. “You have not failed in your duty. I have failed you, and for that, I am sorry,” Legolas said again, “and for leaving you this burden. For forcing upon you the task of taking word back to my father of my death.”

At hearing this, the elder Silvan was staggered into silence. The guard’s tears rolled in fat drops down his cheeks and plashed upon Legolas’ face as before, for Kalin was hovering over his charge once more to keep the sunlight from his Prince’s eyes. Legolas’ words came as a bittersweet surprise to the sentry, whose hopefulness to see his charge awake and aware turned swiftly to dread now that Kalin understood Legolas’ intentions – his Prince was saying farewell. Unable to respond verbally, the elder Silvan merely shook his head, perhaps disagreeing with Legolas’ sureness of his impending death, or perhaps dismissing his Prince’s need to apologize. Or perhaps, Kalin merely sought to deny all of it.

“I love you, my friend.” The Prince stopped, took as deep a breath as he could, and then persisted, “I could not have had a better sentry, a better keeper, or a better ally than you have been to me. Thank you for all you have done for me, muindor,” he assured Kalin, calling his sentry ‘brother’ for the first and last time, but Legolas could have meant it no more than he did just now.

A stifled, sobbed breath broke the silence between them as Kalin tried to compose himself. “I love you, my Prince. I will see you in the Halls of Awaiting,” the sentry eventually replied, his well-intentioned, heartening words sounding more like a threat to the Prince. “But I will first take word to our King, I swear it.”

Legolas would have tried to argue against Kalin’s plan to fade and thus release his faer to Námo just to join his charge in the afterlife, but he knew it would do him no good. Besides, earlier that morning, the Prince had elicited from Elrohir the promise to keep watch over Kalin, as well as given him the message he wanted for Elrohir to tell Thranduil and his other loved ones. Yet, he thought, _I have been Kalin’s sole purpose in life. If by chance I can provide him with some other responsibility – some undertaking he will see accomplished as a final duty to me, then perhaps it will give him impetus to carry on after my death._ Legolas did not take lightly Kalin’s devotion to him; he would rather his sentry live, of course, and thought of how best to provide his faithful friend new direction, if only for a period long enough to allow Kalin’s grief over his Prince’s death to alleviate with the passage of time.

“Tell the others,” Legolas rasped out in a wheezing sibilation when his voice faltered along with the air in his lungs. Drawing in a tight and tiny breath, Legolas repeated, “Tell the others I love them. Elladan, Elrohir, Elrond. Tell my father I love him and will send his love to Naneth. Tell our friends in the Greenwood.” Legolas coughed a bit more, gathered his flagging will to endure, and felt his own tears adding to Kalin’s upon his cheeks as they rolled from his eyes, down the sides of his face. “Tell Estel I love him.”

“Of course, my Prince. Of course I will.” Kalin steeled his voice and his resolve, as he did not want to fall to pieces in front of the Prince for whom he had always tried to stay strong.

From behind the elder Wood-Elf’s fair head, the sun created an aureate nimbus about Kalin, making his sentry appear like some celestial being who had swooped down from the sky above to give Legolas succor in his last moments upon Arda. The laegel twitched his hand, by which his sentry’s hand laid upon the ground where it still supported his weight as he leant over the younger Silvan, and Legolas feebly entwined his fingers with Kalin’s digits. What he would now ask of his sentry was not a fair request, he knew, but Legolas could not die without the knowledge that Estel would be cared for, and while he did not doubt Elladan and Elrohir would do all they could to keep the Ranger safe, he also did not doubt that if Kalin gave his oath to see through this request, there would be nothing upon Arda to keep his sentry from seeing it was so.

And thus, Legolas gulped in another increasingly harder to obtain breath, and then obsecrated, “Please, Kalin. Do what you can to see Estel lives. Protect him. Help him. Do for him as you have done for me these many years.”

Kalin wanted for Legolas to die in the peace of knowing his faithful sentry would follow his final commands; therefore, with a mirthful grin, he teased his Prince lightly, “I will protect him and help him with as much obstinacy as would you do so, as you have done already. Whether by my life or death, I will do as you ask,” Kalin agreed without hesitancy.

In both relief to have obtained Kalin’s oath and in amusement at his sentry’s slight gibe at Legolas’ mulishness in his safeguard of Estel, Legolas beamed right back at his sentry. He did not doubt for a moment that Kalin would do as he oathed and protect Estel with the same adamancy with which Kalin had protected his Prince. Having done all he could do, Legolas closed his eyes and let his tired, aching body relax.

Years ago, when Estel was not yet a man but not quite a child, Legolas had taken the human out into the protected woods surrounding Imladris. They had slept that summer under the trees or by the river, hunted and eaten what they could forage from the forest, and either spoke of anything and everything or said nothing at all in a comfortable silence lasting for hours on end. The particular memory that came to him now was of the very first time he and Estel had stayed in the woods with just the two of them, as the twins had promised to take their Adan brother but been delayed in taking Arwen to Lothlórien. Through the growing miasma of his reminiscing, Legolas heard Kalin speaking to him, asking him to stay awake to wait for Estel to return to speak to him, but though Legolas wanted nothing more than to see the Adan to whom he had pledged his faer and for whom he had given his life, the Elf found it hard to fight against the attraction of insentience. He recalled how Estel – who had stayed up all night to keep watch and surprised the Prince at his having done so successfully – had laughed at the Prince when Legolas realized the Adan had packed his boots full of twigs and grass. This memory swept the laegel up in its simple pleasure, and he began to drift back towards unconsciousness, his retreating faer once again offering him the false cheer of pleasant memories upon which to reflect as his time on Arda drew to an end.

Yet, something pulled at a loose thread along the edges of his unraveling cognizance.

It was likely only happenchance how this reminiscence called the Elf back to the present, and just how his mind made the connection, he could not have said. One moment, the Prince was remembering how the mischievous Adan grinned as he pulled off his boots to clean them of mud, and the next, Legolas’ placidity fled as the setting sun reflected redly in Estel’s eyes, making them glow like burning embers set into his skull – this had not happened those years ago when the memory was made. He had only ever seen such a thing once in his life.

_Elise._

Legolas swore at himself for having forgotten the whole purpose of his fighting against his death to begin, and his body jerked as one does when awakening from a dream or sensation of falling. His eyes flew open and he saw Kalin still looking down upon him, the lock of his Prince’s hair with which he’d been playing wrapped around Kalin’s finger like a golden ring.

From his Prince’s jerking body, the sentry thought he was seeing the last of his charge’s breaths and the paroxysmal fit of his dying rhaw. Kalin let loose a sniffing grumble as he sat upright and reached out to smooth away the remaining tears upon Legolas’ face. Although it pained Kalin’s heart to suggest it, the sentry thought his Prince to be in pain of his injured body – but more importantly, of his grieving and now declining faer. And so, wanting always what was best for Legolas, he soothed the younger Silvan, “Peace. Your end is upon you. It will be over soon.”

_Not yet. Not just yet,_ he railed at himself in determination. He would do as Kalin suggested and give his faer to Mandos once he was done with his task. _Out with it. Do not give in just yet,_ he demanded.

He could see Estel sitting by the Bruinen’s bank but he could also see Kalin leaning over him, peering down at the laegel with unveiled concern. The Adan was still cleaning mud from his boots, the dark soil staining the young Adan’s uncalloused hands, and Kalin was still weeping while watching his Prince die. The fight to refrain from wallowing in the pleasure of his memory of Estel was excruciating to his deteriorating mind and his struggle became physical rather than merely mental. Again, his body convulsed, which elicited a string of expletives from Kalin, whose own body ached in sympathy of seeing his Prince in what Kalin took to be agony.

“Your toil here is done, my Prince. Do not fight it. Close your eyes and rest,” Kalin implored sobbingly, his hands now chafing his charge’s arms and shoulders, his neck and face, as if by this gentleness he might mollify Legolas unto a peaceful death.

_Elise. I must tell him. I must make him listen._

“The box,” Legolas ground out in a susurrus so soft that had not Kalin been an Elf, he would never have heard it. Surprising his sentry, Legolas’ hand flew out to grab Kalin’s forearm, his grip tight at first but waning into a loose hold with each passing second.

His ashen face screwing up into a confused frown, Kalin considered his Prince might be hallucinating or delusional during his final moments, and so almost ignored Legolas. However, the cerulean eyes upon Kalin’s similarly colored own showed the Woodland Prince was aware and lucid, and so Kalin asked, “What box, my Prince?”

“Elise’s box. The splinter,” he rasped out, his clutching fingers falling from Kalin’s arm when what little strength he had failed him. “Tell Estel and the others to beware it, Kalin. The box and splinter must be burnt.”

At this point, Kalin would have said or done anything as a promise to his dying Prince, and while Legolas’ warning made no sense to the sentry, he did not hesitate to agree. “I will tell them. I promise you. I will tell the others all you have told me and protect Estel, as I have oathed.”

His purpose achieved, Legolas felt a divine peace settle over him. He smiled again and closed his eyes for what he could only assume would be the final time. While Kalin thought his Prince to be in pain, the Prince felt little by way of discomfort. He had felt this way before. While suffering from his sorrow due to his maltreatment by the human merchants, Legolas’ rhaw and faer had disengaged as a means of saving his life from fading from the intense sorrow he had endured. He felt little sorrow now, no, but this fading had naught to do with his own will and everything to do with Elise’s curse, which leached the very light of his faer. Thus, when Kalin seized his Prince’s hand to squeeze it harshly between his own, Legolas felt only the lightest of pressure and none of the pain it would otherwise have caused him.

“Wait. No, my Prince. Stay awake. I see Estel now. He will want to speak to you. Let me call to him,” he heard his sentry beg of him, but all of Legolas’ energy was spent. He had nothing left upon which to draw to answer the sentry. From close beside him, he heard Kalin shout out, “Estel! Quickly!”

_I would that I had seen Estel one more time,_ he regretted, wishing with all his being that he could do as Kalin asked and stay awake to speak to the Adan to say goodbye.

The night previous and this morning, however, Legolas had taken care to impress upon his mind every detail of his lover he could – Aragorn’s warmth, the feeling of the man’s body lying behind him, the scratch of the man’s beard upon the back of the Prince’s nape, the pleasant ache caused by Estel’s shaft housed inside the Elf’s body. Already seared into his memory was the low rumble of the man’s laughter, the way his lips curled up at the corners to give away his mischief before he told some joke or played some prank, and how Aragorn growled when reaching his peak during their lovemaking. Legolas regretted having had so little time to spend as lovers with Estel, but cherished every memory they had made. He hoped to see each one as he had been doing while he died. He hoped to keep every single moment he’d spent with his Estel alive in his faer while he spent his time as a haunt, or if given reprieve, in the Halls of Awaiting.

This time, though, when Legolas’ mind found respite from the severing of his rhaw and faer, there was nothing but dark oblivion.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm depressing myself with this story.

It was cool and damp in the cellar where they stood. Reana pulled on a pair of finely embroidered, doeskin riding gloves, which she saw Estel take note of, and so explained, “I didn’t want to touch any of this if it could be helped. I’m not sure if Jakob told you, but I’ve gathered everything I could find in the house that might need to be burned – and then some, I think.”

Estel watched Reana tug her gloves on securely. He had already been told this information by Jakob, but he asked her for the specifics, “What else did you find?”

“I gathered the child’s dolls, a silver necklace the woman wore, and a wooden knife’s hilt from the man. I cut free a string of wooden baubles tied to the child’s crib, as well, along with the handle of a pickaxe from the barn, whose wood looked similar to these crates, though thicker. I also collected a ring the older man in the barn wore on a cord around his neck.” The Elleth grabbed a crate to carry up the steps and waited for Estel and Jakob to do the same so she could follow them out. Neither Adan wore gloves for this, but neither thought anything of it, since they were currently more interested in the contents of the containers than the containers themselves. Reana paused in both speech and action, her head titled slightly to the side as she recalled, “I also took the quilted squares from the walls. The fabric looked old. It might only have been timeworn clothing from which they were made, but after seeing the tattered pennant in the crates, I feared it might also be from Emler’s horde of stolen items. Better to be cautious,” she explicated, not sounding bashful in the least of her over-exuberance in gathering these items.

Estel doubted any of the items of which she spoke would turn out to be the culprit; in fact, with each passing moment, he was more certain what they needed to destroy would be in the girl’s box by the creek. But still, he nodded and thanked her, saying as he hefted his box and made to follow her up the steps and out of the dark cellar, “You have been very thorough, Reana. I would not have thought to include some of those things, and while I’m not sure if destroying any of this will help, I think you are right and it is best to incinerate as much as we can, regardless.”

“Reana says she thinks it best that we don’t touch any of this,” Jakob inserted as he grabbed the last crate. They stood there for a moment in the earthly chill of the cellar. “Unless you have gloves. So she’s offered to be the one to touch it to cast it into the fire, when we begin.”

“That is also wise. We are working blindly here,” he admitted and began up the few steps, behind Reana with Jakob following, and breathed deeply of the fresh air in the houseyard. “But as you say,” he told Reana, “any precaution we take might save one of our lives, and I would rather no one else die because of Elise.”

Together, they walked to the bonfire, where the smell of the tallow lamp oil Reana had thrown upon the wood grew stronger the closer they got, though it did not overpower the scent of the decaying bodies inside the house. By instinct, the three had remained within arm’s reach of each other, as if by this nearness they might be safer. Estel knew they were not any safer, and would not be safe until Elise was destroyed or sent on her way to the afterlife. He sat his crate beside the others, near to the bonfire, for they had already brought up the rest of it a moment ago. Estel spared a glance towards where Kalin sat with Legolas. He saw the sentry holding Legolas’ arm to his chest with one hand while the other was holding the Silvan’s body aloft as he leant over his Prince, though from how Kalin had his back turned to the farmhouse and how the tall grass hid the younger Elf’s body from view, Aragorn could not discern if anything ill were happening.

_Kalin promised to call out should Greenleaf’s condition changed,_ he soothed himself, and the thought had no more than crossed his mind to go check on the two anyway, when Kalin looked over his shoulder and to the farmhouse. Even from here, Aragorn could see the tears glinting over the guard’s pale cheeks.

The Wood-Elf soon leapt to his feet and shouted, “Estel! Quickly!”

The Ranger, his fellow Watcher, and the Noldorin Elleth all came to a dead stop at the sound of Kalin’s shout from the field, but only Aragorn reacted immediately by taking off at a full sprint towards where the two Wood-Elves were. _Please do not let Greenleaf have died,_ he thought, then thought it again and again as he ran recklessly through the fallow field towards his ailing lover. _Please do not let Greenleaf have died. Please Greenleaf,_ he now pled with the Wood-Elf. They were so close to destroying the items – or part of them, at least – and Aragorn had placed all his hope upon their doing so as swiftly as possible to try to save the Prince. Again and again he pled to whatever deity was willing to listen to what he knew were likely wasted prayers, _Please do not let Greenleaf have died. I am begging you. Please do not let Greenleaf have died._

He nearly did not stop in time to keep from plowing over Kalin, who recoiled upon Aragorn’s approach because of the fierce wrath upon the Adan’s face, though said anger was not for the sentry but the situation itself. Kalin had wept distraughtly all morning and wept even now, but Estel could see the difference in Kalin’s face at once. So alike Legolas did Kalin appear that the uncanny resemblance made it easy for Estel read the sentry’s emotions – thus, he could see the sorrow Kalin felt, but most distressingly for the Ranger, he observed the strange, resigned tranquility in Kalin’s eyes and feared what it meant.

“What is it? Is Greenleaf…” he began to ask but could not bear to finish his question as to whether the Woodland Prince still lived.

Kalin dropped down to his knees to take the younger Silvan’s hand in his own again. He looked back up to Estel, which incited the Ranger to drop to his own knees on the side opposite of the guard, who warned the human, “Legolas is almost gone, Estel. Any moment now his faer will abscond from his rhaw.”

The sentry had been making this same proclamation all morning. Something about how Kalin said it now finally caused Aragorn to believe it. _No, Greenleaf. Please. Just keep holding on._ He took the other of Legolas’ hands and pressed it to his mouth. The Elf’s skin felt like ice beneath Estel’s warm lips. The steady thumping of footsteps in the whispering grass caused Estel to look up, which is when he saw Jakob, who was the cause of the noise, running towards him with Reana jogging much more quietly behind. He waved them off before they reached where he and Kalin knelt beside Legolas.

“No, go back. Burn it! All of it!” he shouted in frantic fear with the knowledge that his lover’s time was short – so short, in fact, that any one of the Elf’s encumbered heartbeats could be his last. With such kingliness that it startled those around him, Aragorn ordered in a bellow, “Now! Burn it!”

Jakob did not hesitate to follow his Chieftain’s commands and whirled on heel to sprint back to where the fire laid waiting to be lit. Reana, however, paused as if she wished to come to comfort Estel and Kalin. In the end, though, she saw the best help she could offer would be to do as asked, and so ran after Jakob, her longer legs and energetic Elven body speeding her past Jakob such that she reached the wood pile first. Aragorn paid no more attention to them but looked at his Greenleaf. He caressed the Wood-Elf’s face and was surprised to find it wet.

“Was he crying while unconscious?” he asked the sentry. He did not like the thought of his lover suffering from nightmares or sorrowful recollections whilst dying; that Legolas was dying was bad enough, but for the Elf to grieve evermore while doing so seemed excessive. His Greenleaf had suffered enough.

Kalin’s fatalistic serenity broke as he gave Estel an apologetic, pained grimace. Clearly, the Silvan wished not to tell the Adan what he would now say; it did not stop him from acknowledging to Aragorn, “Legolas awoke. For just a few moments. But he awoke.”

Aragorn’s heart seized to a halt in his chest then doubled its efforts until the man thought it might gallop right out of his flesh. Legolas had woken and Estel had not been there to speak to his lover for what would no doubt be the final time anyone ever heard the Prince’s voice or saw the blue of his eyes while there was life in them. Estel had not been allowed the chance to say goodbye.

“Why did you not call for me?” he chastened Kalin, though there was no true rancor in his voice.

“It happened so quickly. He opened his eyes, startling me, as I thought never to see him awake. I begged him to keep them open, to stay awake, and gave him water when he asked for it. I apologized to him for hurting him, for being so vitriolic this morning, and he forgave me. He asked for my forgiveness for his antagonism. When I thought to call for you, you were nowhere to be seen, and I could not leave him to find you. I am sorry, Estel, believe me,” the sentry begged for the Ranger to understand, searching the man’s face for any shred of clemency he might offer Kalin. “I am sorry.”

Aragorn was beyond heartbroken but he could not be angry with Kalin for this. He would not have wanted for Kalin to leave Legolas to come find him, as it would have shortened the guard’s time with his charge, and potentially left the Prince alone for what might now prove to be the last of his conscious moments. The Ranger devotedly wiped the laegel’s face with the cuff of his tunic, cleaning it of the vestiges of tears thereon, and assured Kalin, “Do not apologize, my friend. I am glad you were here for Greenleaf when he needed you just now. I regret I was away, and likely will regret it for the rest of my life, however long or short it might now be, but I am content to know you were here for him, at least. Did he say anything else?”

With a broken sigh, Kalin rubbed at his own face and nodded his acceptance of this forgiveness, then sobbed in a breath to say, “He asked if everyone were safe. I told him yes. He told me he loved me, that he could not have had a better sentry, keeper, or ally. And he thanked me for all I have done for him, though I ought to have thanked him for the privilege of being his sentry. And then, he told me to tell everyone of his love for them. To tell our friends in the Greenwood, and your brothers and father, and his own father, though I’m sure no one doubts Legolas loves them. He has always given his love and care freely, hasn’t he? Even to those ungrateful of it,” Kalin digressed, speaking not of Elladan, Elrohir, or Elrond with this solemn statement, but of the countless others whom would be sorrowed to know of the Prince’s passing. The sentry loosed one of his hands from his Prince’s hand so he could stretch out his arm across the prone Prince’s body; he then laid this hand upon Aragorn’s shoulder. “He asked me to tell you he loved you, Estel. And asked for my oath to protect you as I have done for him these many years – an oath I gladly gave.”

Unable to find a suitable response to this, for the man’s emotions were running high and rampant and he felt like he might begin weeping if he said a single word in response, Estel settled for merely nodding to Kalin, who removed his hand to take up his Prince’s limb again. Aragorn inclined over his lover’s body and pressed his forehead to the Silvan’s brow, which felt algid and slack under his comparatively feverish own brow. He hoped the Elf could hear him when he told Legolas, “I love you, as well, Greenleaf, as I always have and always will.”

Sitting back upon his heels, he stared down at the Silvan with whom he had hoped to spend the rest of his years, and imagined a momentary flutter of the Elf’s eyelids. It was only wishful thinking, however. A loud crack – sounding much like how a knot in a length of firewood pops in the hearth – drew their attention to where Reana and Jakob had the fire blazing in the barnyard. The smoke drifted from the bonfire towards them, but since they were far enough away for it not to be bothersome, neither sentry nor Ranger paid it any mind. Instead, they watched the busyness of the Ranger and Noldo by the bonfire for a moment, both of them silent and withdrawn inside their own mournful thoughts.

“I know I said before that my Prince would never be conscious, and though he proved me wrong, I do not think he will do so again, Estel,” the Silvan ventured to the Adan, who reluctantly forced his gaze away from the fire and to Kalin. The elder Wood-Elf took out the same salve he had used earlier upon his Prince and used it again now, dabbing it upon the younger Wood-Elf’s lips. “If the others need help incinerating Emler’s things, then go do it. Just stay outside where you can hear me, and I promise you I will not be lax in calling out should he waken again, although as I said, I do not think Legolas will live for very much longer.”

The indecisive Adan grunted a noncommittal response, and after a few more minutes of sitting there with his dying lover’s cooling fingers tangled in his own warm digits, Estel could no longer bear to keep this vigil over Legolas’ fading fear and failing rhaw, and so clambered to his feet so he could be of some use, if nothing else. “If Greenleaf’s condition changes in any way,” he wanted for the elder Silvan to know, “if he so much as coughs or a muscle twitches, even if it turns out to be nothing, call out for me.”

Perceiving what the Ranger meant – that he wanted to be there for Legolas’ final moments and not just should Legolas rouse into sentience – Kalin again promised, “I will. I swear it.”

Aragorn nodded and then stumbled slowly back to the now raging bonfire. Once close enough, he watched silently as Jakob and Reana worked. The she-Elf did most of the actual touching of the items, for she had on the gloves she hoped would protect her. Piece by piece, Reana threw in the junk from the cellar and what she had gathered from the barn and house. Even the crates were tossed in the blaze, with Jakob pulling the poorly constructed boxes apart by hand and pitching the wood slats into the flames to burn. They did not throw everything in all at once so they might gauge the effect of the flames upon each item. It slowed down the process but not by much, for Reana and Jakob both wished to be done with this to try to save Legolas, if possible.

“Is the Prince still alive?” the she-Elf asked Estel. She looked off to where Kalin sat and Estel followed her gaze. In the field, the sentry remained as he had before the Ranger left him; that is, Kalin sat beside his Prince with Legolas’ hand held in his own, his eyes only for Legolas.

He swallowed thickly, feeling as if his throat were closing off from the burn of the smoke, though this ache was from the burn of the sour, powerless tears he was trying not to shed. With his tunic’s sleeve as a barrier between his flesh and the wood, Aragorn grabbed up a stick that may or may not have been from one of the crates, and threw it into the bonfire. “Greenleaf lives for now but Kalin says his time is very near. He woke for a short time while we were in the cellar and said goodbye to Kalin, and bade Kalin to tell everyone of his love.”

“By Ilúvatar’s grace, Aragorn, I am sorry you missed Legolas’ wakening,” Jakob commiserated quietly. The red-haired Ranger tugged at his braided beard before he rubbed at his eyes surreptitiously to hide the welling tears of sympathy gathering within them. He took a step closer to his Chieftain, saw the dark look upon Aragorn’s face, and then paused as he thought better of his intention to comfort his fellow Watcher, who did not even notice this, so focused was he upon the fire.

An interminable rage was mounting inside Estel. This wrath was not for Jakob or Reana, of course, so he did not wish to take it out upon them, but Aragorn felt his temper growing shorter. He wanted nothing more than to screech out his anguish, to run into the flames of the bonfire so that his body might be in as much agony as was his heart, and thus in doing so, he might distract himself from all thoughts of Legolas’ death. _I need to do something. I cannot just stand here._ He wished the twins would return, for then they could hopefully have every item burnt to ashes, and thus Estel could have the cold comfort of knowing he had done everything in his power to save his Greenleaf.

Aragorn looked around him but could find nothing remaining of the items Reana, Jakob, and he had gathered to be burnt, and so asked, “What is left?”

Reana held up an iron stew pot. Upon peering inside, Estel saw Reana had assembled all the metal objects she thought might be from the sneak thief’s stolen goods, including what they had found in the crates. Luckily, save for the silver necklace and copper ring, all these items were tin, with all the precious metals having already been sold long ago by Emler, and since tin, silver, and copper melted easily enough, they ought to have little trouble trying to destroy them. Reana hefted the pot in hand, causing the stuff within to rattle, and told the Rangers with a slight shrug of hesitancy, “I thought after we let this liquefy, we could scatter it in the embers. It is all I could think to do, since we cannot destroy the metal itself.”

“It will have to suffice,” he agreed with the Noldo. He and Jakob walked around the fire when the wind began to push the smoke in their direction, and watched while Reana sat the sturdy iron stewpot in the midst of the smoldering lengths of what wood still remained.

Jakob cleared his throat to get Aragorn’s attention and then nodded towards the house. He began walking that way, causing Estel to follow. Jakob told his Chieftain, “There are also these left, which I suppose is the last of what remains, except what your brothers might find. Care to try your hand at grinding them to dust?”

The statuettes, which would scorch but not burn should they add them to the flames, were gathered together in a pile upon the limestone slab porch, by which a sledgehammer sat at ready. Needing something to occupy him, Aragorn gladly took up the hammer with one hand while he used the sleeve of his tunic to place one of the soapstone statues upon the stoop. He stood back and waited for Jakob to do the same, and then did not hesitate to pound the soft rock of the carving into dust. One by one, he worked to destroy them, his helpless anger welcoming the violence with which he could carry out this task. Still, he took care not to strike the statuettes so hard they scattered their broken bits about, as he did not want to lose pieces. There were only a few of these carvings and the cathartic work ended too quickly for Aragorn’s liking, but he felt slightly better once done. When his Chieftain sat aside the sledgehammer, Jakob bent down to the compacted earth beside the first step and took up a pan and a small, stiff wired brush he had laid there. Aragorn watched as his fellow Adan swept the dust into the pan, and together, they walked back to the bonfire so Jakob could throw the stone shards into the flames, as well. When this was completed, the brief respite Estel had felt from having some task to accomplish was soon over, for now, he once more waited with rage at his own feebleness in ending his lover’s plight.

“That is all we have found,” he heard Reana say, though he found it hard to concentrate upon her words. “Everything is as destroyed as we can possibly make it. No one will be harmed by any of these items ever again, should any of them be the cause of the human girl’s state.”

In a friendly but not at all comfortable silence, the three stood idly at the edge of the bonfire and watched it consume. Estel glanced to Legolas and Kalin repeatedly with one ear always skewed towards the two Wood-Elves, such that he could tell if the sentry shouted, though he knew Reana would be sure to inform him if she heard Kalin shout out to the Ranger.

Jakob suddenly piped up, breaking the silence to say, “You know, I reckon we would have heard if anything like this had happened anywhere else.” When both Reana and Aragorn looked to him in confusion, he explained, “Emler sold a great deal of what he had stolen, right? So I doubt whatever curse or spirit that has caused Elise to die and linger isn’t haunting all of it, but just one piece of it, else we would have caught wind of similar happenings in Bree and wherever else Emler sold the ingots and jewels, right?”

Reana murmured a reserved agreement while Estel nodded absently his own concurrence. _I had thought nothing of the possibility for any of the sold items carrying the curse, but I must agree with Jakob. Surely, we would have heard of similar goings-on had something else been cursed,_ he mused, but then considered, _although I wonder if – should someone else have been affected by the same malady as Elise, would they have ended up killing half their village just because they are lonely?_ It seemed there was likely to be one thing in particular causing Elise’s condition, but even if not, if anyone else had been affected, they were not terrorizing their kith, as was the young Adan girl, at least.

He looked up to where the sun sat in the sky to gauge the time. He found himself aggravated at his twin brothers for their slow return, then thought, _I hope they have not encountered any trouble on their way to and from Elise’s hiding spot for her treasure._ While they assumed the light of the Eldar’s faers was so great that it would take much longer for it to be dimmed into death – an assumption made based upon Jakob’s theory as to how Estel and Legolas had thus far survived when the villagers, all of whom were of full Edain heritage, had died immediately – they truly did not know this to be the case. _What if Elise intentionally slowed my and Greenleaf’s demises? What if Elladan, Elrohir, and Wendt are all dead right now?_ Losing both his brothers and Legolas at the same time would break Estel; moreover, for the safety of the village, the knowledge of where Elise hid her treasures might die with Wendt and thus, they would have no other viable means for stopping her.

In thinking about the slow state of his and Legolas’ deaths, the Ranger was beset with worry for the Prince – more so than was already weighing his mind, at least – when he realized how destroying these items might have had some immediate effect upon the Prince already. Without a word of explanation for Reana or Jakob, he took off at a sprint back to where the sentry and his charge sat. Breathless more from the anxiety gripping his chest than the exertion of his quickly paced running, Aragorn dropped to his knees beside Legolas and took up his lover’s forearm. Under his calloused fingers, the Ranger felt the slow but relatively steady heartbeat pulsing under the Elf’s flesh.

“He is less than before,” Kalin offered without being asked, his words somewhat ambiguous, although having lived his life around Elves and so accustomed to their sometimes strange manner of speaking, Aragorn understood what the Silvan guard meant. Legolas’ faer was evermore unattached to his rhaw. Estel knew more of healing than did Kalin, but Kalin knew more of his Prince than did Estel, and so did not need mastery of the art of healing to declare with certainty, “It won’t be long. If the cursed object was amongst those you burnt already, then it has had no effect upon him.”

He did not argue against Kalin’s dire proclamation.

“He will be fine,” Kalin commented, as if arguing against Estel’s quiet rage over his lover’s imminent demise. Kalin’s words were counter to the truth – Legolas would not be fine ever again. Yet, the sentry went on, explaining patiently now as he had earlier to Estel, “My Prince will be able to heal in the Halls of Awaiting.”

“You are wrong.” Estel held a hand up to deflect Kalin’s rejoinder, his rage needing some outlet and finding Kalin an undeserving target. “You have forgotten – Greenleaf promised to stay with Elise. Legolas will exist as a haunt, like her. His faer will not go to Mandos, Kalin. He will find no peace here in this village, alone and lingering in the dark with only a spiteful human child’s ghost for company. That is, if the sunrise or some random lantern doesn’t cast his soul into pieces. And who knows if then it will go to the Halls of Awaiting? There may be no healing for Greenleaf’s faer. He may suffer for all eternity.”

The unnatural serenity the Silvan guard had adopted in the face of his Prince’s looming death faltered for a moment, and then shattered completely. Guilt swamped over the Ranger’s conscience while he watched Kalin’s blue eyes – so much like Legolas’ eyes – well up with tears. A guttural sob escaped from the Elf’s chest and he looked away from Estel. _It had to be said. I had to make him realize,_ the Adan tried to reason with himself, but at seeing Kalin’s disconsolateness from the reminder of his Prince’s fate, Aragorn could not convince himself of the necessity for his cruel words.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured quietly, and then reached out over Legolas’ prone body, laid his hand upon the Silvan’s forearm, and said again, more loudly than before, “Kalin, I am sorry, but I do not understand why you have all given up on Legolas. While there is breath in my body, I will not give up on Greenleaf – not on his being relieved of this curse and thus given a true death at the least, nor on the hope of eliminating Elise and returning him to us. Yet, I spoke unkindly, even if I spoke the truth. Forgive me, please.”

Although the sentry nodded his head in acceptance of this half-apology, he did not look at Estel. Instead, Kalin shifted his arm out of Aragorn’s grasp and took to tucking in the wayward strands of his Prince’s hair away from his face and behind his ears.

For some reason the Ranger could not fathom, Kalin’s response only angered Aragorn more. He bit his tongue – literally at that – before he could lash out at the Elf again. Aragorn looked out across the field towards the house to see what Reana and Jakob were doing. The fire still raged and his fellow Adan and the she-Elf were both apparently safe. As he watched, Reana was dragging the bearskin rug from the house. With Jakob, she threw it into the fire, as well.

“Estel,” the Silvan sentry mumbled to garner the Ranger’s attention. When he looked to Kalin, the Elf was gazing off into the distant sky, a slight frown upon his tearstained face. The Wood-Elf took in a rattling, hitching breath to calm himself. “By chance, did you find a box while burning Emler’s things?”

“We did. A copper box. Reana melted it in the family’s stewpot and scattered the liquid amidst the ashes.” Kalin hummed a response, telling Aragorn nothing with his evasive noise, such that the Adan asked, “Why?”

Kalin idly recommenced threading his fingers through his Prince’s golden hair, untangling it and massaging the younger Elf’s scalp at the same time. “It was the last thing Legolas told me. He had closed his eyes and was about to drift off back to unconsciousness – or death, I thought at the time – when he abruptly grabbed my arm and told me to beware Elise’s box. And he said something about a splinter.” Shaking his own fair head at the strangeness of the information he conveyed, Kalin began gathering his Prince’s long hair and made a loose braid of it, one that began behind one of Legolas’ ears and when done, lay upon the young Silvan’s shoulder. “He said to warn you and the others of the box and the splinter, and for you to burn both. I don’t know what he meant, but I promised him I would tell you.”

_Perhaps Elise showed Legolas this in one of the visions she has forced upon Greenleaf,_ the Adan ruminated in confusion. _What did he mean by a splinter? Unless Greenleaf was describing the poor condition of the box, telling Kalin it was splintery so we might know which box for which to look._ He rubbed at his forehead, where a burgeoning ache lingered from the fatigue of his sorrow and tired worry for Legolas and his brothers. Indeed, his fear for his brothers was turning to frantic consternation, for if what Kalin said of Legolas’ last words were at all relevant then the contents of the box of which his Greenleaf spoke might be the means to ending Elise – and perhaps the curse to Legolas and himself.

“The box we found in the cellar was copper, as I said. It had no splinters. Unless Greenleaf meant the crates. Or, perchance he meant the box the others are off searching for now,” the Ranger thought aloud to Kalin. “Reana used gloves to touch Emler’s possessions so not to handle them directly. I hope Elladan and Elrohir take similar precautions with Elise’s hidden cache, should they find it at all. And I wonder where they are and what is taking them so long. I have half a mind to ride out to look for them.”

“Don’t, Estel,” the sentry begged in plaintive fervor. “Please don’t leave Legolas again.”

By Kalin’s own proclamation, Legolas would not live much longer, so it seemed there was nothing Estel could do for his lover save for try to obtain and burn the last of Emler’s stolen goods. Thus, he wondered why Kalin was dead-set against Aragorn’s leaving to check on his brothers. He soon learnt why.

“I was wrong before. I said my Prince would never waken again, and he woke. If you leave and he wakes and you are not here to say goodbye…” Kalin trailed off, not finishing his dire thought.

It might ease his Greenleaf to see the human once more, but Estel thought Kalin cared more to ease Estel at this point, and perchance to alleviate the guilt he felt for not being able to call out for the man to come to the Silvan when he had the chance.

Aragorn felt the approach of someone, looked up, and saw Jakob meandering his way over to where they sat with Legolas. When his fellow Watcher stopped at the Prince’s feet, Aragorn asked in mirthless humor, “Does Reana intend to burn everything in the house? She might as well just burn the house down.”

Estel’s comment would prove portentous before the dawn of the coming day, and Jakob would think of it often tomorrow and in later years, he would occasionally think of it on dark, cool nights while sitting around a campfire in the wilds. But for now, he grinned his unflappable grin, if only briefly, for his ever-present cheer was unspoilt by the misery of their situation. “I think she might, if that is what it takes. She asked me to come here to find out from you two if there was anything you needed. Food, water, or whatnot.”

He spoke for both himself and Kalin, as the sentry seemed not to notice the fiery-haired Ranger was even standing there, so enraptured was he in watching his Prince’s rhaw decline into death. “We have food and water here, though I think neither of us cares to partake right now.”

Giving his Chieftain a kindly smile and nod, Jakob dropped to a crouch at Legolas’ feet. “His condition doesn’t change?”

The night before, ere Legolas and Jakob had left the schoolhouse to search out sign of Elise’s presence in the village, the Prince had nearly slit Jakob’s throat when the Ranger had startled the Wood-Elf. Jakob held no ill will over this, it seemed, and to Estel, his fellow Adan appeared more concerned with prolonging the Prince’s life than did Kalin, who wholly accepted his Prince’s death. Aragorn shook his head in negation, unwilling to say aloud that his lover was still soon to die, especially should the wayward twins not soon arrive with Elise’s hidden stash of Emler’s belongings.

“I’m sorry that it is so, my friends,” Jakob told his sentient listeners while gazing down upon the insentient one. “I suppose it might sound silly to say, but I half expected for something we cast into the fire to let loose a feral howl, or emit some black mist or fell voice. Something, anything that could tell us if we were destroying the right piece of junk to save Legolas’ life… and your life, if the girl child doesn’t keep her promise to the Prince to let you live.”

Earlier, when Jakob had tried to touch Legolas to ascertain the Elf’s well-being, Kalin had kept the man from doing so with a single mordant stare. This time, when Jakob laid a hand upon the Prince’s lower leg in friendly comfort, the Silvan sentry glanced his way and gave Jakob a smile so fleeting Estel considered he might have imagined it. The elder Wood-Elf rubbed at his reddened and watery eyes and told Jakob, “Personally, I wish I could hear the suffering, begging wails of whoever has caused my Prince’s death. I wish I could bring them the same cold and prolonged death with which they have cursed Legolas.”

“Then it is too bad the girl haunt is already dead,” Jakob deadpanned, not meaning to be funny but earning a snort of dark hilarity from both Estel and Kalin, both of whom quieted themselves in shame to find anything to laugh about while Legolas died on the ground between them. Jakob sighed, cleared his throat, and then asked Aragorn, “Someone should go into the village, you think? We need to give word to Halbarad and Tomas; else, one or both will be out here searching for us.”

Estel tried to gauge the time before the sunset, and was surprised to realize just how long his brothers and Wendt had been gone. _The sun will set in a couple of hours. Just what have my brothers been doing all this time?_

The hours had passed him by all too quickly as he sat agonizing over his helplessness to end his lover’s fading. A rising fear welled inside him when his mind began to resupply him with the possibilities for his brothers’ delay – the most frightening of which would be if Elise discovered their intentions or caught them pilfering her pilfered items, and perchance took revenge against the twins and her uncle. When Estel noted how Jakob watched him, the man’s deep-set brown eyes clear and focused upon his Chieftain, Aragorn stamped upon the rise of his terror on his brothers’ behalf. He needed to remain clearheaded to see this through to the end – whatever the end might bring.

“You’re right,” he agreed with Jakob. “If Elladan and Elrohir do not return in the next hour, you ride for the village alone. But if they do return ere the hour is up, you and Wendt will go back. You will tell Halbarad and Tomas what we are doing, and then you can both be safe for the night. Besides, the villagers are likely frothing with curiosity that we have ridden out and not returned. They may work themselves up into a state of violence,” he added as an afterthought. This would also turn out to be a fateful statement, and one Jakob would never forget seeing the realization of until he died of old age many years from this afternoon.

Aragorn could tell that even though Jakob had suggested for someone to ride back to the settlement for this very purpose, it did not sit well with the man for him to be fleeing to the relative safety of the village while his Chieftain and the Elves would remain out in the dark, in the thick of the danger. His Chieftain had not _asked_ this of Jakob, though, but _told_ him to do this, such that the younger Ranger did not argue nor voice his displeasure of being sent back to safety.

_The box,_ he remembered and thought to ask Jakob if either he or Reana had seen a wooden box, likely old enough or in such poor state that it would be splintered. Kalin, who thus far had rarely let his regard stray from his Prince for more than a moment at a time, suddenly rose onto his knees to look out towards the road, and thus caused the two Rangers to do likewise. Even from here, Aragorn could see his twin foster brothers, their coal black hair shining with dark iridescence in the amber and cinnamon sunlight of this late autumn evening, as they galloped and kicked up dirt in their path towards the barnyard. Wendt followed.

A belabored and broken sigh came from beside him. Aragorn looked down, fully expecting for Legolas to have woken, for he could not imagine such a sound coming from anyone who was not breathing his last breath, but it was Kalin to have made this seeming death rattle.

“They found something. I can see it is so by the way Reana is smiling as she greets them.” Kalin gave the two Edain a genuine but somber smile, sat back on his arse in the withered grass, picked up Legolas’ hand, and told his royal charge, “One way or another, my Prince, this will all be over soon.”

 


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, dears. Enjoy.

_One way or another, my Prince, this will all be over soon,_ Aragorn repeated to himself what Kalin had said, and as he thought of the import of these words, the Ranger’s flagrantly fleeting optimism at his brothers’ return was squashed like a bug under a Troll’s dancing foot.

He glared at the unnoticing sentry, his latent ire once again threatening to manifest into a tirade against Kalin, despite his knowing the Wood-Elf did not deserve it. Besides which, from how Reana was smiling at her Noldorin kith, Kalin had also surmised that the twins had indeed found that for which they had looked, and this alone ought to have lifted Estel’s spirits, for destroying the final bits of ill-gotten loot Elise had stolen from her grandfather might possibly end her terrorization of the villagers, and regardless of whether doing so aided Legolas, their toil would soon end.

 _I am not giving up on you, Greenleaf,_ he complained to the insentient Wood-Elf on the ground beside him. _If destroying what they have found does not work, I will not stop trying to find a way to save you, meleth nin._

“I think you might be right,” his fellow Watcher suddenly said in response to Kalin’s supposition. Jakob stood, his cerise hair a match for the dimming but brilliantly rubicund sunlight of setting Anor; the man dusted the bits of dry grass from his hands and flashed Aragorn and Kalin his insufferably unflagging grin, saying, “They have found something. Thank the gods.”

With that, Jakob took off at a sprint towards the bonfire, where Reana was in a lively conversation with the twins and Wendt, all of them glancing in Aragorn and the Wood-Elves’ direction upon her saying something – likely about Greenleaf’s condition. Estel looked away from his brothers when his anger for them flared. After months of thinking they had accepted his and Legolas’ love and choice of each other as a mate, to learn today they had kept their true feelings on the matter secret, and to learn his brothers held him accountable for the ill which had befallen Legolas – well, Estel loved Elladan and Elrohir and would never cease to do so, but currently, he did not like them very much.

To Kalin, who was once more focused entirely upon his Prince, Estel murmured in what he hoped was encouragement, “Do not dig his grave just yet, my friend. There is still a chance for Greenleaf.”

But the Wood-Elf said nothing, and Estel was left to wonder briefly the best course of action. Quite literally, what the twins and blacksmith may have found needed to be destroyed at once for Legolas to have any chance of survival, and though he wanted to run to where the twins stood talking with Reana and now Jakob so he could tell them to cast whatever they had found directly into the fire, he did not wish to leave Legolas again. Luckily, he didn’t need to make up his harried mind, for his foster brothers, Jakob, Wendt, and Reana all began jogging swiftly towards where he and Kalin sat in the tall, withered grasses of the fallow field. In just a few moments, their ragged band of companions was complete again.

At once, Elrohir and Elladan bustled Kalin and Estel out of the way to check on the Silvan Prince whom they loved as a brother, with the younger twin inquiring of Kalin and Estel, “How does Greenleaf fare?”

Already, the two identical brothers were feeling Legolas’ pulse and checking the chill of his sallow flesh, even while waiting for an answer. No, Aragorn had not forgiven or forgotten his brothers’ vicious and hurtful words from hours ago and he doubted he ever would, but still, Estel was ecstatically relieved to see Elladan and Elrohir return whole and well. He pushed aside the irritation he felt for them, which was exacerbated by their prolonged absence this afternoon, and instead replied, “Kalin says he diminishes evermore. But Greenleaf woke for a brief time and spoke to Kalin. His faer may be fading, but I do not think he fades eagerly.”

Both of the twins’ identical, dark heads swung up at this, with both sets of their verdigris eyes looking to Kalin for elucidation. The sentry did not disappoint. With more succinctness than he had used to relate this to Estel, Kalin explained, “Legolas was awake for only a few minutes. I gave him water. And he said his goodbyes.”

Elladan and Elrohir shared a similar expression of sorrow to hear this, but while Elladan soon schooled his emotions into stoicism, as was his way, Elrohir’s visage retained its unhappy grimace, which he turned to the unconscious Silvan afore him. “I am sorry we missed speaking to you, brother Wood-Elf,” the younger Noldo murmured to Legolas as he bent over and pressed a companionable kiss to the Silvan’s forehead.

So practiced at the art of healing were Elladan and Elrohir that they aided each other in their tasks as if their hands were controlled by one mind. The twins assured themselves the Silvan Prince was cared for, his broken ribs still tightly wrapped, and his body as comfortable as they could make him, ere they forwent further discussion of the laegel and instead aimed their attention at Estel, whose impatience was obvious, though he had yet to question his brothers of their findings.

Elladan settled back onto his heels and nodded his head back towards their horses, which they had left beside the others’ mounts at the plank fence demarcating the barnyard from the houseyard. “Wendt did as promised and led us right to where Elise hid her cache.”

“It took us no time at all to find it, in fact,” the younger twin added, sitting back on his heels, as well, just as his brother had done.

 _And yet it has taken you hours to return,_ the acerbic Adan groused. Not wanting to start an argument, he bit his tongue to keep from saying this aloud and forced himself to nod. But he would wait no longer to finish what they had started. The exasperated Ranger demanded, his phrasing rousing his brothers’ anger as surely as if he had inveighed their love for the Prince, since his complaint insinuated they had dallied in their return with no care for Legolas’ condition, “Give us your excuses for your tardiness later. I do not wish to wait another moment to try to save Greenleaf’s life.”

Aragorn stood, and then pulled Jakob to his feet before his fellow Ranger even knew his Chieftain wanted for him to stand. When Jakob stumbled from this abrupt change in position, Wendt steadied the shorter man quickly, for Estel was already moving to his next target. Aragorn grabbed the closest twin by his upper arm, who happened to be Elladan, and hauled his sibling unceremoniously to his feet, as well, and though the nimble Noldo did not stagger as had Jakob, he was not pleased to be handled so roughly and knocked his human sibling’s fingers from their grip upon his arm. Estel did not deign to respond to this or to Elladan’s scowl, but began to walk away without waiting for anyone else to follow, although he did say over his shoulder as he began trotting toward the fire, “Call out if Greenleaf’s condition changes in the least, Kalin.”

He knew the sentry would do as asked and so did not wish to waste another moment in palaver when they could be trying to save Legolas – if it were even possible anymore. Without argument, everyone but Kalin jogged back to the yard where the fire still blazed, as Reana had done well in maintaining it both in anticipation of the twins’ and Wendt’s return and to ensure everything they’d thrown to its flames was utterly incinerated.

While Elladan kept running right past the fire to reach his horse, Elrohir gathered with the three humans and his fellow Noldo to ask of them, “Is everything from the cellar already burnt?”

“Yes, and then some. I scoured the house and barn for anything and everything I thought might have come from the tombs Emler looted. I apologize,” she told Wendt, though she sounded anything but sorry when she reasoned to him, “I burnt many things you might have wished to keep for sentimental purposes, but given the circumstances, I wanted to take no chances with Legolas, Estel, or your fellow villagers’ lives.”

Good-naturedly, Wendt waved off this half-sincere justification. “Whatever needs to be burnt to save Legolas, and everyone else, we will see burnt.”

Aragorn shifted his weight from foot to foot, as the impatience of his skittering and humming mind overran his body’s natural inclination to stillness. _I am glad Wendt is not complaining,_ he thought, though in truth, if the man had wanted to argue over Reana’s actions, Estel would not have minded venting some of his anger towards Wendt in debating the worth of any item they had destroyed over the worth of Legolas’ life.

As if he had read the Ranger’s mind, Wendt took off his leather cap, ran his fingers through his roped hair, and then settled his cap more firmly upon his head, while saying, “They are only things. We will burn it all if we must.”

He watched Wendt to gauge the veracity of the Adan’s selfless declaration. In the dying light of the soon to set sun, the blacksmith glistened with the sweat from his running and riding, and from the natural oil of his skin, his dusky flesh appeared like polished ebony. His dark eyes, however, mirrored redly the flames licking over the seasoned wood, which cast off pirouetting sparks in the variant direction of the autumnal breeze. Although Wendt was not related to Elise by blood and despite knowing uncle and niece looked nothing alike, Aragorn was temporarily spellbound by how Wendt’s eyes seemed to hold the firelight within them, as if two coals burnt where his eyes ought to have been, and he wondered in edgy idleness if this was how Elise’s gaze appeared to Legolas. When the smith caught Aragorn watching him, he gave the Ranger an affable, worried nod, and Estel was convinced Wendt cared not a whit if they burnt everything on the farm, so long as it kept his kith safe. Aragorn’s poor estimation of the man – which came mostly from how Wendt had seemed so smitten with Legolas and had taken liberties with Legolas’ person by touching him, even if in a friendly manner – was changed in that moment.

He found himself reflecting, _Shame on me for treating him so poorly. He has been nothing but helpful. My petty jealousy for his attraction to Greenleaf has stained my judgment._

The reminder of his Elven lover refocused Estel’s exasperation away from Wendt and back to trying to save Legolas’ life, such that when Elladan returned with something wrapped in a blanket, Estel strode to his dawdling foster sibling and seized the swaddled item from the aggravated and taken aback Elladan’s hands. Aragorn dropped to his knees upon the ground. Elladan did not protest this, however, for both he and Elrohir could see how their Adan sibling was on the verge of losing his composure entirely, and in truth, they were on the verge of doing so, as well. While Aragorn had only to worry about losing Legolas’ life to Elise, the twins were overcome with anxiety about losing both their adopted brothers’ lives in this singularly horrid day.

“What did you find?” Aragorn heard Jakob ask from just over his shoulder. The fiery-haired Adan had come to stand behind Estel to peer at what his Chieftain was about to uncover.

“Lissie’s box. The one in which she keeps… kept, I mean, the things she took from her grandpa.” Wendt joined everyone else, who created a ring around Aragorn to watch.

 _The box. As Greenleaf said._ Hurriedly, Estel unwrapped the square object inside the blanket, careful to avoid touching it outright, while his heart stuttered as his hope began to resurface from the abysmal depths to which it had sunk. _Greenleaf told Kalin to warn us of the splintered box. I shouldn’t touch it directly,_ he no more than reminded himself ere a gloved hand halted his own when the cracked wood of Elise’s box was finally exposed to their sight.

“Estel, wait,” Reana insisted, which she followed up by asking of him, “Will you let me? Let us be careful.”

So long as she moved with haste, Aragorn did not mind to let the Elleth take care of the task. He sat back on his arse and nodded his assent to the she-Elf. Cautious even with her thick leather gloves protecting her hands, Reana picked up the container from the folds of the blanket and sat it closer to where she knelt beside Aragorn, though she kept it upon the cloth. All in all, the box was nothing of great value or importance, at first glance.

As he looked up to see the intensity with which everyone watched Reana, the Ranger recalled a similar scene from a few months ago, when he, Elladan, Elrohir, and Kalin had taken from its locked cabinet in the stables of Imladris the box in which the periapts for training horses were kept – that is, before Elrond had destroyed the periapts utterly. One such enchanted stone had been placed upon Legolas to facilitate the vengeful Mithfindl’s plot to demean and degrade the Prince; the stone box from which the periapt had been stolen was carved with scenes of horses and riders, and the inside had been lined with a velvety blue material. But this – this was barely a box, for it was made so poorly it looked as if it might fall to pieces and thus not serve its purpose at all. The lid did not fit right, the badly made hinges were coming loose, the wood was warped and split, and it had no latch. Somehow, though, it seemed fitting; just as the carved and elaborate stone box of the periapts suited the insidious and crafty plans Mithfindl and Faelthîr had laid with the imprecated charm’s use, so too did this rickety wooden container suit the seemingly innocuous actions of the haunt to whom it belonged – the girl child who had killed without planning or purpose except the impulsive, childish wish for a friend.

When Reana paused with the box sitting before her but left unopened, Estel had to stop himself from seizing it and prying it open in his haste. Instead, he prompted her in a roundabout way by asking of his brothers, “Have you looked inside it yet? What’s in there?”

“Only enough to ascertain it had anything inside it at all. We did not want to handle the items,” the elder twin answered and then nodded to the Elleth to open the container. Taking her Lord’s instruction, Reana lifted the lid to reveal of what Elrohir spoke, for even as all of their gazes flitted between each object therein, Elrohir detailed them, saying, “Wooden beads, a dragonfly caught in amber, and a piece of cloth. Not much to burn.”

“Like I think told you in the school this morning, Lissie wanted to be just like Emler. Loved Emler’s stories of adventure. It’s why she’d take bits of this rubbish down to the creek, hide them in her box, and pretend she was just like her hallowed grandpa,” the blacksmith said with sorrowful mirth glazing his faraway expression, which was settled upon the house wherein his niece’s body laid rotting and half-eaten. Wendt must have been seeing her as she had been rather than thinking of how she looked now, for he smiled widely despite the tears in his eyes. Huffing a brief laugh, he shook his head and added, “Every now and again Galeb, Emler, or I would go empty her box out and return the junk back to the cellar so she could have her fun and raid it again. Was like a game to her.”

“What we see here isn’t less than what we might expect to find,” Elladan concluded ambiguously, but warned Estel, “although we can’t be sure. Which is why we were late, muindor.”

Estel wanted to hear the story behind why his brothers had taken their sweet time in returning, but not now. Casting a glance to the field where his lover lay dying, Aragorn realized he could see neither Kalin nor Legolas while sitting in the barnyard, and so clambered quickly to his feet. Kalin did not seem to have moved the entire time since they had left the sentry there with his Prince, which Aragorn took as a good sign. He returned his attention to Reana with the intention of inciting her into action, but the Elleth was already reaching into the box to pull out the scrap of cloth from it. She inspected the material for a moment, then stood and cast it into the fire without a word. The Rangers, blacksmith, and three Noldor all watched as the faded, tattered, and plain swatch of pale blue but water-stained and thus brown-mottled cloth first charred around its edges before it was consumed by the fire. It took only seconds for the fabric to be ashes.

“This has to be the box of which Greenleaf told Kalin,” Estel muttered. Unable to stand still and do nothing, he shifted on his feet, his eyes following Reana’s gloved hands, which were gathering the wooden beads to toss in all together. There was little to burn, yes, but Aragorn felt certain the curse upon Elise could be traced back to this container’s contents. He decided in a fierce whisper to himself, for he thought aloud, “This must be it.”

A hand fell upon his shoulder, startling him out of his intense inspection and causing him to whirl around to face the owner of said hand. “Greenleaf spoke of a box?” Elladan questioned. “What do you mean? When?”

Intending to answer Elladan but also wanting to be certain he could see if Reana managed to place the wooden beads in the fire such that they did not roll out of the flames and thus avoid incineration, Aragorn tried to step out of Elladan’s hold; he was summarily pulled back and forced to turn to face the twin again. Estel’s ire flared and he knocked Elladan’s hand from his shoulder just how Elladan had done this to him in the field a short while ago. This caused the elder twin’s wrath to reemerge, as well. In fact, only Elrohir’s precipitous intervention by stepping between the Noldo and Adan forestalled the altercation certain to occur.

“Enough,” Elrohir pled piercingly of them both, his arm held out between the eldest and youngest of his siblings. Elladan stepped away first at his twin’s none too gentle push backwards, but it was Estel who received the chastisement when Elrohir railed at the Ranger, “Can you not stop causing trouble? Just answer the question. What box? What did Greenleaf say?”

“I have waited for you to return with this box for hours. You can wait a moment for me to ensure these beads burn,” he growled in response before he moved away from Elladan and Elrohir so he could watch Reana, who when Elrohir shouted had paused before dropping the beads into the fire. In fact, Jakob and Wendt both were staring at the three brothers with wide eyes. It wasn’t until Reana noted Aragorn’s expectancy that she resumed her task, and once the beads were safely amidst the flames and Estel felt assured they would burn to ashes, he asked of Jakob with a single finger pointing at the last object, “Can you see to this?”

Jakob hummed his agreement, though it was Reana’s gloved hand which took up the amber-encased dragonfly and carried it over to the stoop where they had smashed to smithereens the soapstone carvings. Aragorn heard Elladan give an exasperated grunt. The three discordant brothers looked not at each other but at Reana and Jakob’s toil in grinding the amber to dust. Without preamble, Estel repeated to them what the Silvan sentry earlier had told him of what his Prince had said when awaking. “After Greenleaf said his goodbyes and gave Kalin his final messages for everyone, Greenleaf closed his eyes and appeared to be slipping way – not back into unconsciousness, but unto death, according to Kalin – when suddenly, Legolas seized Kalin’s arm and warned him of a splinter and a box. He made Kalin promise to tell us of it, to warn us of it.”

With the toe of one boot, Elrohir nudged the box in question. Estel had the distinct impression the very blanket on which they had dropped the items would be burnt just in case. Now their curiosity was pacified, the twins’ irritation dissolved into mystification. “How would he know of this box? You two didn’t see it when you found her body, did you?”

“No,” he answered, and was unsurprised to learn they had found the box where he and Legolas had discovered Elise’s body. “I am not sure how he knew of it, lest she showed him in a vision, as she did Emler and this farm, nor of when she might have shown him, but he said to beware a splintered box, and you have found it.”

The twins were having one of their wordless conversations between the two of them, it seemed, and so Aragorn watched Jakob, who was done grinding the amber into dust; Jakob did now as he had earlier with the statues by sweeping the amber’s remnants into the same pan with the same wire brush. Without fanfare, his fellow Watcher tossed the pieces into the fire, and then, with a shrug and for good measure, Jakob tossed the wooden pan and brush into the flames, as well. Reana and Jakob came back to stand with Wendt, all three of them staying slightly away from the feuding brothers. Rubbing his aching head with one hand, the Adan made a mental check of the various symptoms of the strange illness brought on by Elise’s curse. The algid spots upon his back were the same, and were in fact worsening as the moments ticked by, becoming as pronounced and conglomerated as they had been before Legolas had bequeathed his faer’s light to the man. He had yet to start shivering as badly as before, but given that he stood in front of a massive, blisteringly hot bonfire, he thought it likely it was only a matter of time away from the flames ere they resumed.

 _That is it. We have destroyed everything, and yet, I feel no different at all,_ he determined.

Aragorn had just decided he would go check on Legolas when the same thought must have occurred to his brothers. Elladan called out to the sentry, “Kalin! How fares Greenleaf?”

In the distant field, the Silvan guard gave no verbal response but shook his head, indicating there was no change in Legolas’ condition.

Now that he felt they had tried every conceivable means of ending the curse upon Legolas, Aragorn’s frantic impatience had hardened into anger once more, for he considered if his brothers had not taken so long in returning, perhaps they would have burnt these items hours ago and had the time to think of some others means of aiding the Prince.

“What did you tarry before coming back?” the Ranger asked as he turned away from the dancing flames and to his Elven brothers. Reana, Wendt, and Jakob suddenly seemed to find the fire of extreme interest, and without consulting each other, began to work together to build it back up with more of the seasoned wood Reana had piled nearby for this very purpose. Unable to hide his contempt, the Adan charged, “You said you found the box easily enough but you took hours to come back. Burning this junk hasn’t helped Greenleaf, I suppose, but what if it had? You took so long he might have already died before your return.”

Elladan and Elrohir looked to each other, with the younger giving his elder a slight incline of his head, as if to warn Elladan against returning Aragorn’s antagonism. Thus, it was Elrohir who answered with tolerance by which he hoped to pacify Estel’s anger, “Yes, we found the box easily enough, but upon finding it, we had a worrisome thought. Wendt said she liked to hide her box in the hollow of a dead trunk, and would place a flat wafer of limestone over top it to keep it from view. But the box was dropped into the hollow and the rock was not atop it.”

Estel’s mind was clouded with sorrowed anxiety, and so he did not see the point of this logic. His brothers took note of this and Elladan did not hesitate to explain with more patience than he truly felt, given his current anger towards Estel, “Where we found the box was where she died – at least, according to the prints you left and the evidence showing her body had been lying there by the rock fence. If she died without having the chance to replace her box in the hollow and return the stone atop it, then we thought it possible she died abruptly, perhaps from something inside the box, something that killed her ere she could finish hiding her treasure.”

“But the box was closed, so we considered perhaps something she held in hand or in her pocket killed her with its curse, something she intended to place inside the box or something she had just removed from it. As much as Elladan, Wendt, and I wished to return here to you and Greenleaf, we decided it best to trail your and Greenleaf’s path to the farm and look for anything that might have fallen from her pocket or come off her person while Legolas carried her here. We couldn’t risk letting dark fall and thus losing our chance to find it.”

 _I don’t recall her simple sackcloth dress having any pockets, nor did her corpse have on any jewelry,_ the Ranger ruminated. He pulled at his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger as he thought and watched Elrohir’s boot continue to nudge the splintered box from side to side on the unfurled blanket. _And I don’t think she had anything in her hand, or at least, not that I noticed._

“So you followed Aragorn and Legolas’ trail back here to look for something that might have fallen out of her clothes or from off her corpse? That was a wise idea,” Jakob praised. His fellow Watcher was smiling, as was his wont, and right now, Aragorn wanted to wipe his fellow man’s smile right off his face with a fierce backhand. Perhaps Jakob saw this upon his Chieftain’s face, for his smile evaporated and he began poking at the fire with a long length of wood, while Wendt and Reana spoke quietly between them of what else they might burn.

“But I take it you found nothing?” Crossing his arms over his chest, Aragorn’s rage began to mount once more, for the logic of his brothers’ actions – while sound – annoyed him. In fact, it was _because_ his brothers’ actions were so rational that Estel was enraged. While he had stewed in his own vile, bitter, and maddeningly anxious helplessness, his foster brothers had been able to take sensible action. “For hours we waited for you to return,” he criticized again, and again stated, “Greenleaf could have died while waiting for you to come back with this box of junk, and yet you found nothing along our trail, did you?”

“Muindor,” Elrohir chastised gently and walked to where Aragorn stood in resolute wrath. “There are more lives than just Greenleaf’s about which to worry. Your life, included. But also, there is a whole village of innocent people of whom we must think. Believe me when I say we wished we could have returned here at once with this box.”

Now, Elladan took to kicking at the box in question with the toe of his boot, as had his twin before coming to Estel. While Elrohir slowly raised his hand to lay upon Aragorn’s shoulder – moving so slowly he reminded Estel of a stable hand trying to coax a feral foal into accepting touch – Elladan made a disgusted sound and stomped upon the splintered wood of Elise’s treasure cache, causing it to creak in protest. “Yes, Estel, you are right. We found nothing. And burning the paltry junk inside this damned box didn’t aid Greenleaf, either. All of this has been a waste of time.”

The twin brothers could see their human brother was on the brink of emotional collapse, but in that moment, Estel knew Elladan and Elrohir were suffering as much as was he suffering over the thought of losing Legolas. He sighed, uncrossed his arms, and laid a hand over Elrohir’s hand where it sat upon his shoulder. He reminded Elladan and Elrohir in hopes of comforting them, “Greenleaf told Kalin to tell you he loves you. He will die with no ill will over our not finding a way to save him, I know. And Greenleaf would have been a little cross with the both of you and with me had we placed his life above the lives of the villagers. It is just as well you did as you have,” he conceded.

This understatement over Legolas’ crossness earned the Ranger a faint smile from both his brothers, for having known the Prince for years longer than Estel had known Legolas, the twins did not doubt the selfless Silvan would have wanted for Elladan and Elrohir to see to the welfare of the villagers before his own.  

When Elladan again ground the friable wood of Elise’s treasure chest underfoot in his aggravation, Estel was drawn by its squeaking sound into saying aloud what they were all thinking but that which no one had yet to admit, “This Eru-damned box. I’m sure it is the one of which Greenleaf spoke. I was so certain it would contain what might save him. But we’ve burnt what was inside it, you three found nothing she might have dropped while retracing our steps, and Reana has scoured the grounds for every conceivable item she might burn. If all this destruction hasn’t ended Elise, then I am not sure what else we can do.”

The twins had no answer for their Adan brother. Other than the crackling of the fire and the whispering wind blowing through the eaves of the cottage, upon which came the fetid smell of the decaying bodies inside the house, silence held amongst the Elves and Edain there at the fire. After a while, Reana, Jakob, and Wendt all went to the house, where they would no doubt look for more to burn, though it seemed useless now to Aragorn. Upon the fresher wind coming from the wayward zephyr blowing from the general direction of the field, Estel thought he heard Kalin’s lilting tenor, though he could not tell what the Silvan sang to his dying Prince.

“Did you all burn the crates?” Wendt suddenly asked in a loud whisper to Jakob and Reana, as if he did not wish to interrupt the silently grieving trio of brothers. The blacksmith had wandered back to the bonfire, bringing with him Jakob and Reana, all of them empty-handed, which led Aragorn to think there was likely little left to be burnt inside the cottage. “The crates Emler’s junk was in. Did you burn them, too?”

“Yes. I pulled them apart and threw them in. We used them to keep the fire going,” Jakob answered in like voice.

Absently, Aragorn listened to this conversation. While the twins both faced the flames and Estel, Aragorn, who stood closest to the fire, faced his brothers and the field beyond, where his lover laid dying. _It is hopeless. I was a fool to think there might have been some way to save you, Greenleaf,_ he rued, his throat stinging with the acrid smoke and the bitter tears smarting his eyes – tears he refused to shed. There would be time for tears when Legolas died.

“Emler used to brag about how he made those crates from the boards of coffins from some of the tombs he raided. He thought it made him sound so clever to have broken apart those poor dead souls’ final resting places to make crates to haul away the things he stole from them.” The blacksmith harrumphed in disgust and meant to continue his berating of his foster sister’s father in law, but when Elladan, Elrohir, and Estel’s heads all swiveled towards the blacksmith as if they were all three attached to the same neck, Wendt noticed this and quieted with frazzled bewilderment.

“What?” Wendt asked the brothers, ere he noticed the splintery box lying upon the blanket on the ground, which Elladan was still tormenting with his booted foot. Wendt then leant down as if to pick up his niece’s treasure box, but thought better of touching it with his bare hands and so righted himself to comment, “Thought you would have burnt this by now.”

_I’ve been so concerned with what was inside the box, it never occurred to me to consider the box itself might be the harbinger of this curse. I wonder…_

Aragorn did not get the chance to voice this query, nor did his brothers, who were struck with the same epiphany, for Wendt answered their unasked question. “He made this one, as well. Can’t believe he gave it to little Lissie to hold her treasures. He told me he made it from some boards out of one of the tombs in the Downs. I never told Jenafer. She would have thrown a fit,” the blacksmith reminisced sadly of his sister and her daughter. “I will gladly pitch it in the flames.”

All three brothers watched as Wendt made a grab for the box using the blanket, though Reana halted him and offered to do it, instead. Reana picked up the box delicately with the very tips of her gloved fingers, as if the box were encrusted with blood, shit, and gore. Aragorn’s heart raced madly as she approached the fire with it. Stepping nearly into the glowing coals at her feet, the she-Elf jammed the box onto the top of a relatively flat, smoldering half-log. He briefly looked to his brothers, upon whose faces Estel saw the same faint glimmer of hope he felt himself.

 _It’s the box. It must be the box itself._ Over Aragorn’s life, he had been in dismal circumstances where he had felt his death a certainty; or worse yet, where he had been certain his friends or loved ones would soon die. Indeed, never more so had he experienced these dire situations than over the past several months, when it seemed Legolas’ life always hung by frayed thread. Somehow Estel had persisted, while his friends or loved ones oftentimes lived and occasionally died – over the past several months, though, his Greenleaf had endured. He felt it now. He felt hope and once again refused the possibility of Legolas’ death. He felt Greenleaf would endure.

 _This is it. It is what cursed her; it is the tie keeping her faer here rather than in the Halls of Awaiting._ And now, they would sever it, he was sure of it.

While the others stood back away from the heat and smoke, Estel stepped forward. He wanted to see the box burn. He wanted to behold the destruction of the thing that had nearly stolen from him the love of his life. Even when the acrid smoke purloined his breath and scalded his eyes, when the heat felt to be blistering his face and drenching his clothes with sweat, Aragorn did not step away. As he watched, the box began to scorch, its dark wood blackening along its outer walls, until after a few more moments, the very old and dry-rotted box burst into lively flames. Estel felt a disappointment causing his belly to moil, for he had placed his very last hope upon this foul box and so far, it gave no sign of being any different from any other item they had burnt.

But then, he heard a strange noise coming from the fire. From the corner of his eye, he saw his fellow Edain and Reana as they startled from the suddenness of this din, and from behind him where he could not see, he heard one of the twins gasp at the strangeness of what they were hearing. At first, it sounded like how wet wood hisses while burning in a fireplace, but as the noise grew in volume, the hissing changed.

He had a vague memory a time when he had been riding in some battle in the South, and all around him, horses and their riders were dying in droves. Estel’s own mount – a seasoned warhorse that feared neither blood nor danger – had been struck in the throat by a spear. As the horse dropped, it had screeched in terror and agony, but the hole in its throat had made its vocalized panic sound like a hellish scream erupting from some otherworldly pit out of which nightmares might spring.

Aragorn did not truly recall this memory right now, for he had not the time or the presence of mind; and yet, he recalled the utter terror he had felt upon hearing his horse’s scream. He felt it again now, for the box sounded just the same as his warhorse had sounded – agonized, terrified and terrifying, and unearthly.

Had not the shriek from the fire been so loud, he might have noted Elrohir and Jakob calling out simultaneous warnings to him to stand back, but so focused was he upon the fire and so loud was this ethereal scream that Aragorn did not move back; in fact, he took another step forward for a better view. His heart raced with the sureness of this victory, a smile spread over his heat-reddened face, and the Ranger knew in this moment, wrong though he would soon find himself to be, that his Greenleaf would be fine.

He saw the box’s charred wood become a hauntingly strange facsimile of itself, for the wood did not yet crumble to ash, but retained its shape until the very last of the thin planks were consumed by the flames. And then, though the box itself seemed to have burnt entirely, the fire itself felt to be increasing in potency, the heat from it multiplying exponentially. _I should get out of the way,_ Estel had just enough time to think before the flames leapt into greater life and a concussive wave of sound and energy – feeling like a clap of thunder occurring directly in front of him but emanating from the box-shaped ashes just as they crumbled into nothingness – knocked Aragorn off his feet and onto his back upon the ground, and into unconsciousness.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has grown so much longer than anticipated. I think it is two-thirds over now. I hope. Thanks for reading, and especially thanks to those couple of you who admit to reading the story! :P

When Aragorn came back to his senses, it was with two identically worried faces peering down over his own. He blinked his eyes and furrowed his brows in concentration, wondering, _What in Udûn just happened?_

“Estel?” the youngest of the twins prompted the Ranger, patting the Adan’s face to focus his human brother’s attention upon him rather than the sky, which Aragorn had been looking at in vague and inexplicable worry. He wasn’t entirely sure where he was or why he was on the ground. This wasn’t the first time he had woken from unconsciousness with his brothers looming over him, and if he lived past today, then he doubted it would be the last, either. Elrohir laid his palm upon Aragorn’s forehead as if feeling for fever, though by this gentle hold he forced the man to look at him while he asked, “Estel? Speak to us, muindor.”

He tried to comply out of instinct to appease Elladan and Elrohir’s fear for him, which lay blatant upon their faces, but nothing except a creaking groan escaped him. This was enough to appease his foster brothers, it seemed, for Elrohir sighed in relief and Elladan lost the frantic fear lurking in the tense set of his body. Aragorn found he was able to focus his gaze upon Elladan when the elder Noldo grabbed Aragorn by the chin to move his face away from Elrohir and towards him, such that Estel could look nowhere but at Elladan.

“We thought we lost you. Don’t do that to us again,” Elladan demanded complainingly with a smile contrary to his expressed grievance.

Another face drifted over him just then, one Estel had not known until recently, but he saw upon it the same concern his brothers wore. _Wendt._ And then, two more faces were examining him from overhead. _Reana, Jakob._ The Elleth was uncapping a waterskin and handing it to Elladan, likely to give to Aragorn to drink, while Jakob was simultaneously doing the two things he loved most to do – that is, tugging at the braids of his long, red beard, and grinning like a madcap fool.

His fellow Ranger jested in his utmost relief to see his Chieftain awake and relatively well, “I thought we’d lost you, too. That blast – or whatever it was – knocked us all back a step but none of us were hurt. You, though, were knocked flat!”

_The blast. Elbereth’s flaming arse. We destroyed the box,_ he recalled, and with this seemingly random recollection came a multitude of questions about what box he was thinking of and why a box would end up with him lying on the ground. The barrage of his remembrances inundated him with the wheres and whys and whatifs of their current situation, and cresting upon all this knowledge was the reminder of Legolas’ nearness to death. They had destroyed the haunt’s box, thinking it might be the tether tying her to Arda when her soul ought to have released to Mandos’ care, and in doing so, wagered their last hope for his and Legolas’ survival, not to mention the welfare of the village. _Greenleaf,_ his addled mind supplied him, and at once, Estel struggled to sit up. The twins were pleading with the Adan to lie back and rest for a moment, but Estel would not have it. _I must see to Greenleaf. I must. I have to know if he… I have to know he is alive._

“Legolas?” he asked in a painful croak, his voice breaking in saying just this single word. His brothers finally quit trying to keep him lying back and instead aided him into sitting. Elladan offered the human the skin of water, of which Aragorn drank deeply and gratefully – not because he thirsted, but because it would soothe his burning throat enough for him to be able to question them. And once able to speak, he clarified, “What of Greenleaf? Is he well?”

Strangely, no one would meet Estel’s gaze and no one answered him immediately. Elladan recapped the skin, Elrohir fussed with Aragorn’s tunic by brushing off ashes and dirt from the man’s fall to the ground, while Reana, Wendt, and Jakob all seemed to find other business beyond his immediate view.

He did not bother asking again. He would see for himself.

Aragorn scrambled to his knees, needing to push between his brothers to do so. He ignored both the twins’ attempts to keep him from leaving and their fretting insistences for him to allow them to aid him, for he would not wait to learn of his lover’s wellbeing. Estel climbed to his feet and at once took off towards the field. As he trotted carefully through the grass, his limbs felt shaky and unsteady and his mind was as clouded as the autumnal sky overhead. Once, he stepped in a dip in the untilled earth – an animal’s burrow, most likely – and nearly turned his ankle, but with an unnoticed twinge of pain and a brief flail of his arms, he righted himself and ran onwards to where Legolas laid with his sentry watching over him. He could not see Kalin’s face just yet, but the sentry’s head was tilted slightly towards Aragorn, listening to the man’s approach. The trembling timbre of the Silvan’s gentle singing carried over the freshening, algid wind, which blew into Estel’s watering eyes.

While Elladan, Elrohir, and Reana’s following footsteps were inaudible, Aragorn could hear plainly the plodding footfalls of Wendt and Jakob as all of them trailed Estel through the field. The Eldar might have overtaken his pace, but none of the Noldor did so, perchance to give Aragorn the opportunity to reach Legolas first. To Estel’s left, the sun was on the verge of falling beneath the horizon in the distance. Despite his worry for Legolas and his desire to reach the Prince forthwith, the thought occurred to him, _It will be full dark soon enough. Wendt and Jakob need to be off to return to the village._ It was with this in mind that he halted midway between the bonfire and where Kalin sat beside his Prince; the Wood-Elf was now watching the advance of Aragorn and the others. The sentry was not crying, which Aragorn let give him faith in Legolas’ wellness.

He turned on heel, unsurprised to find everyone just a few steps behind him. “No. You must leave now,” he demanded, both his sudden pause and his fervency causing everyone to stop as they reached where he stood. Aragorn strode forward towards his fellow Edain, ordering Jakob and Wendt, though in truth, he had no authority to order the blacksmith, “Go back to the village. Make sure everyone is safe and let Halbarad and Tomas know what has happened.”

Jakob spared only a moment to look past Aragorn to where Legolas laid, ere he grabbed Wendt’s arm and encouraged the broader, taller man, “Come. We can do the most good ensuring your kith are safe for the night.”

For a moment, it appeared as if Wendt would argue. But Estel did not wait around to see if a quarrel would occur. If they chose to stay and forfeited their lives, it was beyond his ability to control right now. Yet, he then heard the two men’s heavy but slower footfalls as they trotted back the way they had come, back to the barnyard, and thus back to the horses waiting patiently at the fence rail where they had been tied. Aragorn picked up his pace now, sprinting heedlessly forward to his Elven lover.

As he hurried the final few strides to Legolas, he asked, “Does he live?”

Kalin nodded but Estel barely noticed. He would not believe it until he felt Legolas’ living flesh beneath his own.

“I heard a loud bang. Almost like one of Mithrandir’s fire-poppers. Is everyone well?” the Silvan asked, searching his friends around him for injury as they approached.

Aragorn did not respond nor listen to his brothers and Reana as they explained to Kalin what had happened while the sentry had been keeping watch over his Prince, nor did he consider asking Kalin how Legolas was doing. He fell heavily to his knees beside where his lover laid prone on the ground. He first leant over the laegel and placed his ear next to the Elf’s chest, where he heard the timid but continuing heartbeat beneath the Silvan’s tunic. His own breath held in his anxiety-tightened chest, he next placed his cheek near to Legolas’ mouth and felt the low and humid breaths coming from the Wood-Elf’s lungs. Lastly, he laid a hand upon the Prince’s forehead to feel Legolas’ temperature, and as earlier, found it cooler than it ought to be.

But he told himself, _He lives. Destroying Elise’s fetter might have killed him. Both of us, I suppose. But it didn’t. Greenleaf still lives._ To Estel, who was willing to cling to any shred of offered hope for Legolas to persevere, this was enough for now. _If what we have done has any effect at all, then perchance Legolas will get better. Maybe it is not too late for him._ Aragorn leant back down to place his cheek alongside the Wood-Elf’s cheek, and using the hand not holding him up, pressed the Elf’s face to his own. The Silvan’s breath ghosted over the human’s ear in a bolstering rhythm, for as long as Legolas continued to breathe, Estel could not forsake his effort to save the laegel.

“It was the box itself and not anything in it,” he heard Elladan tell Kalin, once he stopped ignoring their conversation long enough to listen to it. “Apparently, Emler made the crates and boxes from coffins in the tombs from which he stole in the Barrow-downs.”

“Who knows what fell magic lingered in that wood,” Elrohir added.

With his eyes closed and his cheek aligned with the Prince’s cheek, he could not see anything but he heard the rustle of the grass and felt someone brush against him as the person knelt down next to him. A hand settled upon his back, where it lightly massaged the tensed muscles between his shoulder blades. Smaller but no less strong than a male Elf’s hand might be, the pleasant and soothing touch came from Reana, the Ranger surmised. After a few more moments of enjoying the mere nearness of the Prince, he sat back upon his heels. The others were quiet and watching him.

He took up his lover’s chilled hand and began chafing it to warm it between his own. “It is destroyed and Greenleaf is still alive,” he whispered, then asked of his brothers, who stood on either side of the Prince’s feet, “Might it not be too late for Legolas?”

Elrohir and Elladan looked to each other, communing wordlessly, but in the end, it was Kalin who answered the Ranger. “He fades still. I can feel his faer diminishing bit by bit. But if the box of which Legolas warned us is destroyed and Elise with it,” Kalin soothed Aragorn, sounding convincingly reasonable except for the morbidity of his words, “then Legolas can die in peace. His faer will not be trapped with Elise. It is for the best.”

Not wanting to vent his anger upon the Wood-Elf, Estel bit his tongue – quite literally, at that – and refused to respond. He took up the other of Legolas’ hands and began to try to warm it as he had the other. He knew Kalin was right, but the Silvan being right did not make his truth any easier to accept.

“But what of you?” the sentry asked Aragorn, which caused Estel to look at him. Kalin searched the Adan’s face for the truth, for the Wood-Elf knew Estel would lie if he felt it needed if it meant everyone would ignore him in favor of the Prince. Thus, it was with suspicion Kalin inquired, “Do you feel any different?”

In truth, Estel felt the same as he had the night before; that is, the vitality bequeathed to him by Legolas’ unwanted gift of the light of his faer, the reason for his living for this long when it seemed Aragorn should already be dead, was now mostly spent. Whereas this morning and until the last couple of hours Estel had felt an overabundance of energy, he now felt emptied of it. The ice-cold spots upon his lower back, spread out in the facsimile of Elise’s fingertips where she had touched him, had been ameliorated by Legolas’ faer’s light but were now returned, though they had yet to conglomerate and consolidate into the same frigid area of flesh of the night before. And while he felt the keen chill of the breeze, he did not yet suffer from the same shivering as he had soon after Elise touched him.

He told his brothers none of this. Right now, if Kalin was right, then Legolas was dying, and he wanted for all of their attention to be set upon the Prince and not on his own measly, mortal life. _If they think I am well still, then it will be easier to convince them to continue to work to save Greenleaf, without their mothering me as I die,_ he decided of his brothers. He thereby set about proving Kalin’s misgivings correct.

“I am fine. Tired, a few aches and pains from landing on my ass a short while ago, but fine,” he lied with no remorse whatsoever.

Aragorn was not an adept liar. Over his years spent amongst his foster family in the valley of Imladris, Elrond, Elrohir, and Elladan had honed their ability to discern when Estel was being mendacious. He considered he must be better at deceit than when younger, though, for the twins gave him relieved smiles, which in ordinary circumstances would have roused Estel’s guilt for misleading his brothers; now, he felt nothing but his own respite at being believed.

Kalin was not as fooled. And yet, the Wood-Elf did not decry Estel’s assertion before the others. Instead, he said aloud what everyone else was thinking, “Then perhaps all will be well. Or as well as we can hope. If the tether tying Elise to Arda is now destroyed, she will fade, Legolas can fade and go to the Halls of Awaiting, and we can pray you will live. Perhaps all will be well,” the sentry repeated, his effort to cheer them all valiant but useless, as they all looked at the Prince lying dying upon the withered grass and knew that nothing would be well for any of them when Legolas died. Aragorn leant back over the Prince and did as he had before in pressing his cheek tightly against the laegel’s cheek. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply of the fragrant scent of his lover’s hair and skin, holding this breath until it hurt to do so.

“Yes, pray and hope. That is, if we dare to hope a child haunt who has killed her family and neighbors has any valor to keep her word to spare Estel from the eventuation of her curse – if we haven’t released her soul before she could.” Elladan sighed in frustration at the many unanswered questions with which they were left, before he said quietly, “I would that Ada were here.”

_As do I,_ the Adan thought, while Elrohir made a quiet hum of agreement to his twin’s wish. _Ada would know what to do._ His back hurting at the strain of leaning over Legolas, Estel finally opened his eyes and sat upright, his cheek feeling cool where it had been lying against the Wood-Elf’s chilled cheek. _Is there truly no hope? We have burnt everything, have we not?_ When a loud noise erupted from across the way, they all turned to the fire, where they saw Jakob casting in another log to keep it going. With that, the Ranger and blacksmith went on to the horses, though both Jakob and Wendt looked back to where the Elves and Estel were gathered around Legolas.

“We should have told Wendt to refrain from telling everyone what has happened,” Elrohir commented as he waved at the two men, urging them to leave and also showing them that all was well – or as well as could be expected.

The Noldor, Silvan, and Adan watched Jakob and Wendt ride out of the barnyard in the distance. Having not brought his own mount, Wendt took the horse Aragorn had ridden to the farm. It did not matter. Estel felt certain he would not need a horse any longer, since he was sure that if Legolas died, he was doomed to die, as well. If his own condition was any indicator, then the curse had not been broken; Estel found he did not mind the thought of his own death, but rued the notion of dying ere doing everything in his power to keep Legolas from sharing Elise’s fate.

“It is too late to tell him now, I suppose,” Elladan replied. “But Halbarad will see the benefit in keeping this from the villagers, as will Jakob, so hopefully they can keep Wendt from gossiping to anyone.”

They stood and sat in silence for a while, with the only sound the whisper of the wind blowing through the grass and leaves of the trees in the copse nearby, and the occasional pop and crackle from the bonfire still burning in the barnyard. From how Kalin began to fidget, Estel discerned the sentry had just thought of something new about which to torment himself. Just when the Adan thought to ask Kalin what was wrong – beside the obvious wrongness of the situation itself – Kalin writhed in his seat upon the ground and inhaled sharply.

“I should have listened to him this morning,” the sentry suddenly mumbled. Caught in his guilt, Kalin repeated, though this time more loudly, “I should have listened to him. Legolas wanted me to take a message to our King, to pass on his final words, and I rebuffed him. What was I thinking? What will I tell Thranduil now?” the Silvan asked the Elves and human around him, turning his anguished gaze upon each of them in turn. “When he woke for those few moments, Legolas told me to tell his father he loved him, but my Prince could barely speak. There was more he wanted to say, I’m sure of it. And I would not let him speak his mind earlier to appease him before he died. Why did I act like such a hardheaded fool?” he asked again with escalating desperation.

Elrohir ambled closer to Kalin and crouched down beside him. He laid his arm across the Silvan’s shoulders and told the Wood-Elf, “Peace, my friend. This morning, when Legolas and I were alone in the small room of the schoolhouse, he asked me for a favor, and I pledged to keep it. When you refused to listen to his message for your King, Greenleaf gave me the message for Thranduil instead. Legolas’ message is not lost.”

This ought to have comforted Kalin, but upon seeing the Silvan’s face, Aragorn could tell that instead, Kalin was heartbroken to know Legolas had needed to ask for someone else to bear this burden because his usually loyal sentry could not be trusted to do it. Indeed, despite his obvious desire to know of what his Prince had spoken, Kalin could not muster up the courage to ask because of his shame.

After a few long moments in which no one spoke and in which Kalin tried to overcome his guilt to ask for the message meant for Thranduil, Elladan finally inquired of his twin on the floundering sentry’s behalf, “Well? What did Greenleaf want for his Adar to know?”

“He wanted for Thranduil to know he loves him, forgives him, and he hopes his father will forgive him, as well.” Both twins appeared more exhausted than ever Aragorn had seen them, but it was an exhaustion of mind and will, and not necessarily of body. Elrohir heaved a great sigh and rubbed at his fatigued face and lachrymose eyes, adding, “And I told him I would tell our Ada and all of his friends of his love for them, just as he asked Kalin to do. I also promised to keep watch over you, brothers, and you as well, Kalin, to keep you all from grieving for him. And I gave him our thanks,” the younger Noldo ended in a sibilant susurrus. Elrohir stood from where had been kneeling beside Kalin, stared towards the declining sun, and muttered, “Though I wish I had not.”

“Our thanks? For what?” the elder Noldo asked his twin, whose grief he could feel as acutely as if it were his own.

“For saving Estel’s life. Or for trying to anyway.” Elrohir held his arms around his middle, as if his belly hurt, or as if he were hugging himself. His twin, sharing his brother’s anguish, walked around the prone and insentient Prince’s feet to be beside Elrohir. Shaking his head at what he perceived to be his own imprudence, Elrohir lamented, “I wish I had not thanked him. I mean, I do not wish he had not tried to save Estel’s life, but I fear my gratitude might somehow have encouraged him into making his bargain with Elise.”

As they were standing nearly shoulder to shoulder, Elladan needed only to lift his arm to lay over his twin’s shoulders in familial comfort, just as Elrohir had done for Kalin a moment ago. “You could not have known. None of us could have known to what lengths Greenleaf would go to protect Estel. Although, I think we all should have guessed – every one of us. We all know Legolas loves each of us – and most especially Estel – more than he loves himself. He proves it now with his death.”

_They say that with such ease. They say he will die as though they find it easy to accept._ The Ranger did not think he could bear to listen to their conversation any longer, for his heart was already too hampered with his lover’s imminent death to abide the added weight of the Elvenking’s oncoming sorrow. _I have thought nothing of the Elvenking. What will I tell Thranduil? How do I tell him his worst fears have come true, and just as he predicted, I have been the death of his son? That’s assuming I live long enough to take word to Thranduil of Legolas’ death. If I do live, if Elise has kept her promise or her curse is somehow broken, then the Elvenking might murder me,_ he considered, and found himself not at all upset at the thought of being slain by Thranduil, since he held himself responsible for Legolas’ death now and for much of the torment through which the Silvan had endured over the last months. He thought of the twins’ accusations from earlier, when they had told their human brother – in a roundabout way – they held him responsible for all the ills Legolas suffered since professing his love for the man. _I hope if Greenleaf dies, then I die, as well. I cannot live knowing my own brothers believe this all my fault. I do not want to live with knowing I will be the cause for Thranduil losing the last of his family._

After a few minutes, Kalin finally spoke up. “That is some comfort, at least, to know he told you. However this ends, at least all of us know his message, so one of us can take it to the King.”

Kalin’s latent meaning was clear; despite the Elf’s promise to his Prince to keep watch over Estel after Legolas’ death, Kalin might die from grief, and thus never see his King again to complete the task appointed to him. With each passing moment in which Legolas remained insentient, his breaths uneven and shallow, and his heartbeats growing perceptibly weaker, Kalin’s fate was sealed, as well. _And now Elladan, Elrohir, and Reana will need to dig three graves. One for Greenleaf, one for me, and one for Kalin._ Aragorn could only pray Reana might offer Kalin some incentive to live on, for although they had not been courting for very long, they seemed enamored of each other already. In fact, Reana soon stood from where she sat beside Estel, walked around Legolas’ fair head, and sat behind Kalin. She wrapped her arms around the sentry’s middle from behind and laid her dark head upon the middle of the Wood-Elf’s back, while he hugged her limbs to him with an eager desire to receive this simple comfort.

The poor Silvan sentry soon found another reason to beleaguer himself. “I asked for Legolas’ forgiveness for my behavior today and he gave it, but still, I railed at him, called him foolish, and disobeyed his orders. And even now, he lies here with broken ribs because of me. I have failed. My only purpose in life is the protection of my Prince. And I have failed to protect him. I have failed my King in protecting his son. And I have broken the oath I made to our Queen by letting Legolas die without having given my own life first to safeguard her beloved child.”

“No, you have not…” Reana began before Estel tuned out their conversation to listen instead to his own self-recriminations.

Aragorn wished he could find it in himself to console Kalin but he could not. He let his brothers and Reana speak to the sentry. Estel found it increasingly harder to listen to what they said to Kalin. He studied Legolas’ face in unwitting imitation of the Elf, doing as Legolas had done the night before and this morning in trying to memorize every distinction of his lover’s fair and beautiful features. He took to trailing the skin of Legolas’ cheeks, brow, and chin, and then began threading his fingers through the Elf’s hair, pulling it free from the simple braid Kalin had plaited into it. The others spoke on, offering each other solace, but there was no ease for Estel.

The disconsolate certainty of his lover’s demise was dragging down Aragorn’s normally unflagging willpower. He found only one source of succor, telling himself, _I may not have been given the chance to speak to Greenleaf a final time, but he will die knowing how much I loved him._ Estel could take consolation in his having had the chance to spend weeks with Legolas out by the lake, where for the first time since admitting their love, the Elf and Ranger had been allowed to enjoy fully their devotement to one another. Last night and this morning, and ignoring his suspicions for the underlying cause behind Legolas’ desire for him, Aragorn had been able to express his affection  for the Prince both physically and verbally. Having the Elf in his life had been a blessing; having Legolas as his lover had been beyond the wildest stretch of the man’s hopes.

_It should not have ended this way, but if it had to end, at least Greenleaf will die with his father’s acceptance of him, with his friends around him, and with the two of us having spent weeks in each other’s company. At least Greenleaf will not die of grief. At least he will die valiantly, having tried to save me and the village,_ he reasoned.

But none of this filled the hollowness he felt in his chest.

It took him a while to realize the others had grown silent. When he looked up, he found them watching him yet again, much to his aggravation. _How long have we sat here doing nothing?_ he wondered, while aloud he asked, “Have none of you any more ideas of how to save Legolas? Will we merely sit here and wait for him to die?”

“I will go scour the house and barn a final time,” Reana offered, releasing her embrace of Kalin and standing as she spoke.

The Elleth was moved to action by the sorrow of those around her, for while she was not close to Legolas, she felt a sincere duty to Elladan and Elrohir to do what she could to save them from sorrow. Additionally, while she and Kalin were not bonded, her seeing Kalin’s devotion to his Prince raised her estimation of him to a higher level. The valiant Elleth wanted nothing more than to alleviate Elladan and Elrohir’s sadness to be losing their friend, Estel’s fear to lose his lover, and her own new lover’s sorrow to be losing his beloved Prince.

In fact, Aragorn looked up at her to see her wiping tears from her eyes as she told him, “I, for one, will not sit by and wait for him to die… nor you, Estel, should this curse not be broken. I will not go back to Imladris and tell Lord Elrond I gave up.”

Elrohir shook his head and shoulders, while looking to Estel like a dog shaking the water from off him, though the Ranger thought it likely his brother was rousing himself from the morose stupor in which he found himself. The younger Noldo then nodded to the Elleth, his visage hardening into determination. “Elladan and I will help you.”

Elladan then nodded at both his twin and the Elleth, and straightened his back as he steeled himself for the work needing to be done, as neither Elladan nor his brother wished to leave any opportunity to save Legolas and Estel unexplored. Neither could go home to face their father or to Mirkwood to face Thranduil without being able to say truthfully that they did all they could to save the two. “Yes, let us go do something.” The elder twin tried to persuade Estel, then, by telling him, “Meanwhile, why don’t you lie down, brother? Lie here beside Greenleaf and rest for a while. His faer may be fading still, but he will feel your presence and be comforted by it.”

The human did not argue. Kalin tugged off his cloak and trundled it up in a sloppy roll, making for Estel a comfortable pillow upon which to lay his head. When the Silvan placed it upon the ground, Aragorn immediately moved it so it sat right beside Legolas’ head. He was already knelt beside the Wood-Elf’s uninjured side, and so when he stretched out along his lover’s prone and motionless body, he did not fear to hurt Legolas further when he huddled up beside the Prince to both share his warmth with the laegel and offer the Silvan the comfort of his presence – should Legolas be capable of perceiving it. Aragorn hoped with all his being that Legolas would know he was near. He had already missed the chance to speak to the Prince a final time; he would not miss being there for Legolas’ final breath.

When the twins saw Estel would comply, they left with Reana, back to the house and barn, where they would make a final pass of the dead family’s possessions for anything else relevant to their cause. They knew, as did Estel and Kalin, that the effort was likely hopeless, but they were not willing to concede defeat just yet. When his brothers and Reana were gone, Aragorn allowed himself to relax a bit. He could feel the beginnings of the intense shivering accompanying the curse of the haunt, though he tried to hide it from Kalin for now.

“I doubt I will fall asleep,” he told the Silvan sentry, not bothering to sit up or open his eyes to look at Kalin as he implored, “but wake me if his condition changes at all,” he asked the sentry of his charge. “Please.”

“I will, Estel,” the Wood-Elf promised. Unlike before, when Estel had been in the cellar and unreachable by Kalin, the human was near enough now for the Silvan to alert without difficulty, so Aragorn did not doubt in the least that Kalin would do as he promised. He allowed himself to relax a little more, especially when Kalin repeated, “Of course, I will. For the slightest reason, I will.”

He wished they could be certain Elise was gone. If she were truly destroyed, her soul removed from Arda and sent to where the Edain’s souls go when cleaved from their bodies, then as Kalin had said, they could at least find solace in knowing Legolas would not linger as a disembodied ghost, but be free to join his Naneth, lost friends, and ancestors in the Halls of Awaiting. It left a bitter taste in the man’s mouth to acknowledge, but he conceded nonetheless, _If you and I must die, then I hope you do not linger, meleth nin._

Tenderly, Aragorn laid a hand upon Legolas’ torso, just above his heart, so he could feel the Elf’s heart as it beat. He concentrated upon the rise and fall of the Silvan’s chest, willing it to continue.

_I am sorry. I am sorry I could not save you,_ he thought to the Elf beside him.


	34. Chapter 34

Aragorn did not fall asleep but he did lose himself in his thoughts, and thus rested his body even while his mind raged on, although occasionally, his rampant cogitations would cause his muscles to twitch in the discomfort of lying still when his mind would rather his body to be as active as was it.

Unbeknownst to Estel, what he did now was similar to what Legolas had spent the night prior doing, while watching the Ranger sleep ere he and Jakob went out to search for Elise. Last night, Legolas had sat on the cot beside Estel while thinking about how when he or Estel died, the Prince would never again be able to see his lover, for the souls of the Edain and the Eldar were kept separate in the Halls of Awaiting. It occurred to Estel now as it had to him before, and as it occurred to Legolas a minimum of once a day, that even should Legolas’ faer be rehoused in his rhaw in Valinor, as were many Elves when it was deemed suitable by Námo, Estel would never know nor see Legolas should it happen. Aragorn’s only comfort was in thinking his foster family would eventually be able to see Legolas again – at least, that is, should Elise truly be destroyed. And if the girl’s haunt were not gone, Estel would spend the rest of his life – shortened evermore as it seemed to be – in trying to end her to ensure Legolas would not suffer the indignity of being forced to persist in solitude and meaninglessness with no one but the hateful girl’s specter for company. Aragorn thought of this and much more as he laid there in the grass, too keyed up to sleep and too exhausted and mournful to be of any use, should there have been anything he could think to do. And the thoughts of what he might do to be of service to Legolas consumed him just as much as his besorrowed attempts to memorize every butter colored hair upon the Elf’s head, each fair expanse of his lover’s exposed skin, and the familiar feel of the Wood-Elf’s lithe body against his own.

_Wendt and Jakob should have long ago made it back to the village,_ he determined. He knew the two Edain would have ridden with haste to reach the settlement ere the sun set; assuming his fellow Ranger and the blacksmith had encountered no problems along the way, they should have already found and told Tomas and Halbarad of the goings on at the farm. He was glad Jakob and Wendt were relatively safe in the village, but wished, _I would that Elladan, Elrohir, Reana, and Kalin had never come. Unfortunately, their being here has not saved Legolas… nor myself… and I do not want any of them to share my and Legolas’ fate._ It worried him Elise might touch one of his brothers or the Elleth or sentry. Yet, he knew none of them could be persuaded to abandon him and Legolas to save their own hides, and so they put themselves at risk by remaining. Now that Kalin had promised his Prince to protect Estel as he had once protected his Prince, there would be no dissuading the sentry from remaining by Aragorn’s side until one of them died. Given the circumstances, Estel thought it likely he would be the first of them to go, but even then, he was confident Kalin would try to travel back to Mirkwood to take word of Legolas’ passing to Thranduil before giving in to his own grief over his charge’s death.

About an hour after first lying down by Legolas, he was roused from his unbearably mordant self-recriminations and saturnine deliberations by the insistence of Kalin’s hand, which shook Estel’s shoulder firmly but lightly. He rolled onto his back, away from where he had buried his face in the uninjured side of Legolas’ chest, and looked to Kalin. The sentry was weeping yet again, which did not surprise Estel, and given how he could feel for himself Legolas lived, Aragorn did not think anything more was amiss than what was already in utter shambles around him – that is, everything. Yet, Kalin was calm and smiling down at the Ranger, which when Aragorn took note of this, caused him to panic more than could Kalin’s crying have done alone. At once, Estel sat up, his head swimming from the abrupt change in position.

“What is it?” he asked the sentry. Frantic now he sensed Kalin’s tranquility was a sign of something far more dire than it ought to indicate, he begged to know, “What? What is wrong?”

But Kalin shook his head a bit and looked to where the twins approached through the grass. His silence confused Aragorn, but the man decided the sentry either wished to wait for the others to arrive before explaining or disturbed him merely because the twins were coming. Either way, Estel felt a quickening in his chest as his anxiety mounted. While he had been drifting in his hateful thoughts, the sun had set completely. It was full dark. The flagging bonfire in the barnyard was the only light about, save for the torch Reana carried as she trailed far behind the twins on her own way to where Kalin and Estel sat with Legolas.

It was with the dark in mind that Elrohir called out to his human brother halfway to where he and Kalin held vigil over their dying Woodland friend, with the younger Noldo saying, “Estel. Come to the fire. I realize it is no safer, since Elise may touch us and kill us without fear of the light, but at least you and Greenleaf can be warm. And perhaps, if the girl has any good will at all, she will leave you be long enough to get some true sleep.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. Aragorn picked up Legolas’ lax hand and held it to his cheek, feeling the unnatural chill of the Elf’s flesh. He cared little for his own comfort but had to concede, _It might comfort Greenleaf to be warm, and it may keep me from shivering when this becomes worse and thus I may avoid a while longer attracting my brothers’ notice._

While no healer, Kalin was strangely attuned to his Prince, having kept watch over his charge for years beyond Aragorn’s comprehension, and so thus would likely have a better notion of the effects moving the Prince would have upon Legolas than would Estel or the twins. Estel turned away from watching his brothers’ approach and to Kalin, asking the Silvan sentry with the plan of remaining here if Kalin answered in the negative, “Do you think it will ease Legolas to be near the fire?”

His eerie smile flickering but not fading, tears trailing down his grief-haggard cheeks, and his voice even and peculiarly cheerful, Kalin shook his head and told the Ranger, “It no longer matters. Legolas is gone.”

Aragorn waited for more information, for what he’d been told made no sense to him; at any rate, it made no sense until Elladan and Elrohir were close enough to Legolas to discern for themselves what they had not been capable of perceiving at a distance. Estel looked to his brothers for them to explain the suddenly taciturn Kalin’s strange assertion, but now they were close to the Woodland Prince, the twins’ faces fell while making soft sounds of distress – one right after the other – and Aragorn knew he did not want to hear what they would tell him.

“How long?” the younger Noldo whispered. Elrohir looped his arm around his twin’s forearm, pulling his brother’s limb to him, which he then hugged to his side with both hands wrapped tightly around Elladan’s arm. The identical siblings stopped at Legolas’ feet and stared down at the two Wood-Elves and Ranger. “How long has Legolas been gone?”

_Gone? What on Arda do they mean?_ the Adan wondered in true confusion. At once, Aragorn argued to himself as he gazed down upon his Elven lover, _Greenleaf is not dead._ Estel looked back up to his brothers, both of whom began to weep calmly, ere he looked again down to Legolas, though Aragorn was startled to find his vision obscured by quick and stinging tears. _He is not gone._

Kalin took in a very audible, very shaky breath, which he then released laboriously, as if the effort of it exhausted him. With his head tilted to the side and his abnormally serene smile in place as he gazed upon his Prince, Kalin looked like a loving father staring down at his sleeping Elfling. “Only a few moments ago. Shortly after Anor slipped beyond the horizon.”

As if to offset this notion, Estel pressed his lover’s palm against the side of his whiskered face, his mouth turned into the crook made by the inside of the laegel’s slightly bent wrist. He could feel upon his lips the beat of the Silvan’s heart, and while chilly, there was still warmth in Legolas’ flesh. He placed his free hand upon the Silvan’s chest and sensed the slight movement of its inhalations and exhalations. _He lives. Legolas lives. What do they mean?_ he asked himself in disbelief, but Estel knew the answer already. His mind could not comprehend of what they intimated, but his heart knew. Oh yes, Estel’s heart knew and stuttered in painful lurches as his mind finally caught up to tell him, _Greenleaf is gone._

“At least he did not suffer,” Elladan tried to placate his friend and brothers, though this rang hollow to everyone. The twins were taking comfort from each other’s nearness, with their limbs intertwined and their hips and shoulders pressed together, so close were they standing side by side. “At least he died peacefully.”

Aragorn rose to sit upon his booted heels with Legolas’ hand still in his own. He huffed a time or two, evincing his incredulity in their acceptance of this obvious falsehood, and then claimed to the Eldar around him, “Greenleaf breathes. His heart still beats. _He lives._ Why do you say he is dead?”

Elladan and Elrohir released each other so they could come to him. They knelt beside the Ranger, one on each side of him, and Elladan entwined an arm through one of Estel’s arms while Elrohir slid a limb around Estel’s waist. Overcome with sorrow as they were, neither could find how best to explain to their young Adan sibling what they needed to say, and so it was Kalin who tearfully told the Adan, “Legolas’ faer is gone.”

_It can’t be. I can feel him. I can feel his presence,_ he countered. Aragorn did not yet say this aloud, as he was certain his brothers and the sentry would think him mad with grief. He was no Elf. His faer was not bonded with the Prince, as were the faers of Elven lovers. But he did not doubt himself. He could feel Legolas as clearly as if the laegel were awake and speaking to him. Standing apart from the brothers and Silvan, Reana was far enough away that her torch cast no glow upon the Elves and man gathered around the fallen Silvan Prince, but her tears glittered gaily in the luminescence of the illumination. Even Reana seemed to accept Legolas was dead, much to the Adan’s growing bewilderment. Estel could only continue to shake his head in denial of their claim. _He is here. He is not gone._

“He is not here. His faer is gone,” the eldest of the brothers tried to explain to the youngest by repeating what Kalin had only just said, and responding as if he had heard Aragorn’s thoughts. Elladan squeezed Estel’s arm and leant against him slightly to say in a voice quiet with sorrow and respect for their dead friend, “Only his rhaw lives now.”

“And without his faer, his rhaw will die soon enough; it is only a matter of time,” Elrohir continued. The Noldo reached up and pushed Aragorn’s hair away from his face as he used to do often when the man was just a child. “I am sorry, Estel. I am so very sorry. There is nothing we can do.”

_He is not dead. He breathes. His heart beats,_ he repeated to himself. The young Ranger could not seem to stop shaking his head in adamant renunciation of their words. Everyone told him often enough how mulish and stubborn he was, and in regards to Legolas’ death, he would have to agree with their estimation of his character, for Aragorn could not accept it. He _would not_ believe it. He refused to give in to this; it was not in his nature.

Over Estel’s disagreeing head, the twins shared a worried glance before they looked to Kalin, seeking help from each other to make the Ranger understand such a foreign idea. The sentry’s weeping was growing louder into outright sobs even though his peculiar placidity and relieved smile did not diminish by much. Elladan and Elrohir were as upset as were Kalin and Estel, but they were also fearful of what the Prince’s death portended for their Adan sibling, and so were valiantly trying to keep from falling to pieces in their anguish.

Elladan twisted his fingers with the man’s fingers and held their hands to his own chest to exemplify as he explained, “His heart beats, as does mine, but what makes me who I am, my faer, still resides in my body. What makes Legolas who he was has left. I suppose you have never seen an Elf fade from sorrow before, my brother, but this is similar. The faer departs though the body may linger.”

Elrohir added to his twin’s explanation, his hand once again combing the Adan’s hair back from his face, “Our Greenleaf did not die of grief, but it is just the same as if he had. Elise’s curse and his giving of his faer’s light to you disconnected his faer from his rhaw, muindor, though in truth, it was riven by sorrow because of the recent torment he endured and it never truly had the chance to heal.” When Estel shifted his head away from Elrohir’s affection, the twin merely began straightening the Ranger’s collar, instead. With heartbroken, tender steadfastness, he reiterated to the man to try to make him accept what was told to him, “What lies before us now is only Greenleaf’s body. His faer is with Námo now.”

They touched Estel with the same unchecked fondness they once used to show the human, back when Estel was much younger and not prone to embarrassment or irritation from their smothering regard. But they also did this for their own solace. Elladan and Elrohir had just lost one of their fostered brothers and they knew they might soon lose the other. This was the only reason Aragorn didn’t respond with anger or move away entirely from his brothers’ mothering. Soon, Estel knew the twins would not be able to offer the man their brotherly affection.

_His faer is with Námo,_ he parroted back to himself what Elrohir had told him. This did not sit right with the Adan. _But it cannot be. He will not go to the Halls of Awaiting. His faer is stuck on Arda just as Elise’s soul._

With the evidence of Elise’s curse still upon his own body – the algid spots upon his lower back, the shivering he fought to hide from his brothers even now, and the weariness he knew would eventuate into a cold and languid death – it was clear to Estel the girl’s specter still existed, her promise to Greenleaf was not to be kept, and as was she, the Wood-Elf was to become a haunt and may remain so for all eternity, if somehow Elise had the means to keep Legolas’ specter from coming into contact with light. And Estel would die, as well, without even being able to save his lover from the bargain he had made for the broken promise Elise had given.

_But I feel him. I know it. I know he is here. Greenleaf is not gone._

From across the way, Reana approached slowly, looking hesitant on whether to comfort Kalin and her twin Lords. She had in her hand the torch she and the twins had been using to facilitate their search of the dark house. It seemed useless to Aragorn now, for even if they found whatever kept Elise amongst them and ended the curse upon her and perhaps even Estel, the Adan would still count themselves to have been too late. They still needed to ensure they had found the source of Elise’s imprecation to make sure it was severed, and thus ascertain they had forced her soul to depart to the Halls of Awaiting so the villagers would be safe. But right now, the young Adan didn’t care about any of it except for the Wood-Elf lying upon the cold ground before him. Once again, he took up Legolas’ hand and held it to his mouth. Against the warmth of his lips, the laegel’s skin felt like the soft underside of a dew laden petal, reminding the Ranger of a spring’s dawn, when the nip of the night is chased away by the wondrous rising of Anor, who bequeaths her warmth and vitality to the inhabitants of Arda.

_If Elise still lingers and Legolas lingers with her…_

His harried mind began to form a rational thought, but it stopped short when the ring of illumination from Reana’s torch grew closer. He acted on instinct: Aragorn stood, knocking his brothers nearly to their arses with his suddenness, jumped over Legolas’ body with such reckless speed he nearly tripped over the Elf’s feet when he landed, and then raced quickly to Reana. The Elleth stopped dead in her tracks. She watched Aragorn’s rapid advance, wariness over Estel’s state of mind stealing over her face the closer the Ranger became, until he stood just before her.

“No. No,” Estel said again, more loudly this time, and reached out for the torch she held. Reana let Estel take it from her willingly enough, though she and the others wondered why Aragorn repeated, “No. Do not come near with that.”

Aragorn threw the torch upon the grass several feet away ere he quenched its flames by kicking and rolling it in the underlying dirt of the grass field. Once out, he spun around riotously, looking for any other source of light, though the closest illumination now came from the bonfire in the barnyard, which was much too far away to fall upon the Elves and Ranger. From what Legolas and Jakob had told him and Halbarad of their encounter with the haunt in the orchard, the moon – scant as it was already and even more so because it was hid behind the clouds in the night sky – had no effect upon the newly made haunt of the man last night. It had taken the torchlight to dissipate the poor deceased man’s dawdling soul – the one Elise had taken when the unsuspecting, innocent villager went out to fetch the family’s dog from their backyard.

Elladan and Elrohir sped to be with their brother, who knew he must be worrying the twins. He knew also his brothers thought he was going mad with grief, but Aragorn did not feel mad – _he felt Legolas_. As clearly as if his lover were standing beside him, Estel felt the Silvan’s presence.

_He is here. Greenleaf is here somewhere,_ Aragorn decided with such certainty he smiled at the respite this brought. _Greenleaf is not gone._ As he had while looking for more sources of light, the Ranger spun on heel, his silver eyes searching the field and the copse of trees beyond for some trace of the Wood-Elf to whom he had pledged his life and love.

“Estel. Brother,” Elrohir beseeched as he took hold of Aragorn’s arm to still his wild movements. “Calm down.”

“Stop,” Elladan said nearly at the same time as Elrohir spoke and took the other of the man’s arms to try to impede him from continuing his abnormal behavior. Elladan’s tears were now stopped; his alarm for Estel took precedence over his grief for Legolas and in fear over what the Ranger might do in his madness, the elder Noldo pled, “Please, Estel. Stop a moment.”

_No light. We can allow no light. I feel him still, so Reana’s torch must not have come close to him. Surely it has not,_ he entreated any being capable of granting such a wish, _please do not have let it come close to him._ He allowed the twins to halt him, for he wanted them to listen and so knew he could not act the fool; else, they would dismiss him for being overwhelmed with mourning.

To his exceedingly worried audience, the Adan explained ramblingly with his fervency to be believed, “Greenleaf is here. Can you not feel him? Legolas is here. I feel him still. You say he is gone, but he is not gone. He is here,” the ardent Aragorn proclaimed.

“Estel…” one of the twins began, but by then, the Adan was pulling free of their hold of him.

The Ranger forcefully threaded his way between his Elven brothers and back to the Prince’s body, where Kalin was dotingly cleaning his charge’s face with a relatively clean section of his cloak. Unashamedly, Kalin wept bitterly, noisily, as he performed this task, his calm from earlier having been devastated by witnessing Aragorn’s grief-stricken actions. Nonetheless, when Estel laid a hand upon the Wood-Elf’s shoulder, Kalin turned his pallid and anguished visage up to him, and upon seeing the obdurate Adan’s buoyant adamancy, a perfervid hope crept up Kalin’s face. It started with his quivering lips, which calmed into a small smile, ere it cleared the gauntness of his cheeks, smoothed the lines around his reddened eyes and fraught brow, and then sparked a fire in the Silvan’s blue eyes.

Seeing his own hope reflected back to him, Estel gave Kalin’s shoulder a friendly squeeze and then spoke to Kalin specifically, telling the Wood-Elf, “Your Prince is not gone. I swear it. It is not too late.”

“Estel,” came Elladan’s lachrymose voice from close beside him, for again, his brothers had trailed Aragorn, this time back to Legolas’ body, with their hands out to be ready to catch him should the man begin to act irrationally once more. Similar to how one might try to calm a frightened horse, Elladan slowly slid his hand along Estel’s back to his upper arm, with Elrohir’s hand following suit on the other side, until they once more gripped him tightly. “Legolas is gone,” the elder Noldo tried again to explain, “He will not come back.”

With a pained and sympathetic frown for Kalin, Elrohir reasoned with Estel, “Do not give Kalin false hope, nor allow yourself to be worked up over this. Greenleaf cannot come back.”

“He is here!” he shouted, startling the Elves around him and a bird who had been perched in the grass nearby them. The bird squawked angrily and flew away. Estel followed its flight to the coppice across the way, scanning the field and the trees in the copse all the while, and wishing beyond all else he was capable of seeing Elise, for if he could he might be able to see Legolas, as well. He tried to pull away from the twins again, only to find their holds tighten to vise-like grips upon his upper arms. Forgoing his need to move for now, he reminded the Eldar around him, “Elise’s touch turned the villagers into haunts, as was she. The same has happened to Greenleaf. He is here. I may not be able to see him, but I can feel him.”

His brothers only appeared more worried to hear this, for if the man’s assertion was right, then Legolas was in a worse state than even death. Elladan said as much, “Then he should not be. We should not hope for Greenleaf to remain in such a state.”

“Hope? No,” Aragorn agreed, but argued as he feebly tugged at his arms to free them, “but linger he does. And if his rhaw lives and his faer is not in the Halls of Awaiting, then there is a chance they may be reunited once more.”

From the dour and disbelieving sets of their identical faces, Estel knew his brothers thought him to be grasping at straws. Perhaps it was the desperation he showed, or their need to appease him to calm the man, but they did not argue against his allegation of Legolas’ faer being nearby, but switched arguments. Elrohir decisively stated, “Then we should do as we ought to, and if his faer is here amongst us now, we should drive it with light to the Halls of Awaiting, where Greenleaf belongs.”

Elrohir released the Ranger and walked to Reana, who looked more confused and concerned than before, and picked up the dead torch. He would need to walk to the bonfire to light it, but just the thought of his Elven brother doing so was enough to make Estel yank his arm out of Elladan’s grasp, stride to Elrohir, and yank the torch harshly from his hand. “No. I will not let you take this chance away from Legolas. He may be able to do some good still.”

“He will not awaken!” the exasperated Elladan exclaimed to Estel and came to where his twin and the Ranger stood, facing off as though they might soon fight. “Greenleaf is gone!”

Before any such altercation could occur, Kalin cleared his throat, wiped the tears from his face, and interrupted by saying, “Wait.”

Although neither twin moved from beside him, they both turned with the Ranger to look at Kalin as he spoke. If the sentry had some opinion about what to do for his charge, then the twins would listen. Kalin was as close to family as any of them were to Legolas, and in Elrohir and Elladan’s thinking, Kalin had the final say in such matters concerning his charge, since the sentry was appointed by Thranduil to be Thranduilion’s guard and his keeper of sorts. Estel watched as a range of emotions flitted over Kalin’s face; first, he shook his head to free it of indecision, then nodded to himself in agreement of some inner argument, ere he finally looked back at the brothers, his stalwartness in the protection of his Prince evident in the stubbornness upon his face.

“Estel may be right. My Prince may still be here. And if he is like Elise, then he can hear every word we say, and see everything we do. And he would not want for you to be arguing over him.” Unlike the Noldor, Kalin was apparently completely agreeable to Aragorn’s determination of Legolas’ circumstance, and like Estel, did not want for his Prince to be forced into the afterlife if there was still any chance of his hewn faer and rhaw to be remade whole again. This became clear when he told them, “If Legolas wishes to move on to the Halls of Awaiting, he knows he needs only to find the nearest light. There is no need to force him. That Estel feels Legolas still shows he is not yet ready to move on. And if Legolas lingers, then Elise is lingering, as well, and my Prince may be the only way to save Estel and the village, since the curse is not yet lifted from Estel. Already he shivers. There may be little time for us to find another plan to save him. Legolas may do what we cannot.”

_And now comes their wrath,_ the unnerved Ranger regretted, since Kalin had given away his knowledge of Estel’s poor condition, which the twins had not known about until now. They had feared the curse upon the man was not broken, but so far still had cause to hope it was so. He closed his eyes just as his brothers whirled around to face him again, for he did not wish to see the betrayal they must be feeling to have been lied to by the Ranger.

“You said you felt fine,” Elladan addressed Aragorn, anger tainting his otherwise even toned voice as he asked, “but you were lying?”

He had to confess the truth now and would do so gladly, if it aided his purpose in having them believe Legolas’ faer lingered amongst them, if it kept them from trying to compel Legolas’ faer to the afterlife. “The numbness and coldness in my back have returned. The shivering, as well,” he admitted, opening his eyes with reluctance, and seeing just what he had not wanted to observe – their hurt at his perfidy. To underlie his point and despite his attempt to hide it, an intense shudder ran its course from his upper thighs, over his lower back, and to his shoulders – all of which the twins noted.

Elladan and Elrohir shared their fury between them with a single mordant look – a look which might have promised a lecture for the human, had not the twins been so frightened for Aragorn’s welfare. With Kalin’s added support for Estel’s claim, however, the twins could not find it in their hearts to continue this argument. And, of course, with the chance Legolas might be able to save Aragorn by speaking to Elise while a haunt as was she, the Noldorin brothers could not force the issue further without also giving up the hope for Aragorn’s survival. They did not agree with either the sentry or the Ranger, but only seemed to Estel to be resigned to accepting this for now.

“No torches. No light. Not near Greenleaf’s body. We don’t know if he can stray far from his rhaw, as does Elise,” the Adan thought aloud, walking away from his brothers to begin pacing beside his lover’s prone body while he tried to find the proverbial silver lining in this storm cloud of a situation.

The very thought of light casting his lover’s faer into oblivion, or hopefully, should it happen, to the Halls of Awaiting, made him look up at the sky to gauge the time before the sun rose. They had hours before this happened, but these hours seemed short indeed when faced with the finality of Legolas’ faer dissipating like smoke in the wind. Even worse a thought, there was no guarantee that the Elf’s rhaw would continue to live without his faer, and thus even should the Prince find some means of ending the curse, he may not have a body to which to return.

“We must give Greenleaf time to see this through. You are right,” he conceded to the twins in hopes of mollifying them, pausing in his pacing to say, “and Legolas’ faer may never return to his rhaw, but in the meantime, Legolas is still our best chance at ending Elise and saving the village, even if he is not saved.”

_Or if I am not saved,_ he thought but did not say aloud, though he had no need to, for by their increasingly acerbic glowers, the twins were well aware of the distinct possibility of this outcome.

Elladan rubbed his forehead as he considered the Ranger’s logic, while Elrohir only glanced around the area, likely looking as had Aragorn for some sign that their Woodland friend was actually amongst them. Reana was standing as she had been since Estel took the torch from her – that is, stock-still with utter bewilderment. And Kalin, Aragorn’s only true ally in this matter, was nodding to everything the Adan said. He could only thank Ilúvatar he had Kalin on his side.

“In the meantime, we should try to find some means of ending Elise, regardless of your insistence Greenleaf’s faer will do this for us,” Elrohir contended – an idea to which everyone agreed but not one any of them could find a means to seeing completed.

He reminded himself, _Dawn. If his faer will react to light as have the other souls Elise has touched, then with dawn, Greenleaf will not be able to hide from the light, and he will be lost to us forever. Unless, I suppose, Elise has some means of prolonging his existence in such a state, since she agreed to his bargain of sparing me if he remained beside her._

And still, the Ranger thought they were missing something important. The lethargy he had felt while lying next to Legolas was now absent. He felt invigorated with optimism, even if his body remained sluggish, cold, and shivering. As certain as he was his lover’s soul was nearby, and as much faith as he held in Legolas’ ability to do what he could to save Estel and the villagers, Estel knew Legolas would sacrifice himself to do so. Aragorn still needed to find a way to save the Wood-Elf while the Wood-Elf worked to save the Ranger and the settlement’s inhabitants.

“By Eru’s grace,” Elladan exclaimed softly. Elrohir whirled to face the same direction as his twin, Kalin stood for the first time after hours of sitting beside his Prince to keep watch, and Estel stopped his pacing at the dread in his brother’s voice.

He followed Elladan’s line of sight to try to ascertain what had the twin’s mouth hanging slightly agape with alarm. It took the Adan a moment to understand what he was seeing. The dirt path running between the house and barn was lit up by the bonfire, but beyond that, it was dark until the dirt path met the road running from the creek to the village. There, at the junction of the path and the road, were a few swiftly moving, bobbing, orange-red lights. And behind, there were lights in a greater number, these moving more slowly than the first group, grouped loosely together along the road like an oncoming swarm of oversized fireflies.

So taken aback was Kalin by this sight that the dutiful sentry actually left his Prince’s side, which surprised Estel when the Wood-Elf was suddenly standing by him. Kalin asked, “Is that what I think it is?”

Standing closer to the farmhouse than were the rest of them, though not by much, Reana reached to her waist, where her longsword was belted, and rested her hand upon the hilt in readiness. Aragorn’s already rapidly beating, anxious heart began to pound evermore. When she looked back to the twin Lords whom she was sworn to protect, the confusion upon her face was no more; the battle-ready resoluteness of a trained and seasoned warrior had replaced it.

Having keen vision but not so keen as the Eldar around him, Aragorn could guess what they were seeing but waited for one of the twins to say for certain. Elrohir and Elladan had already sussed out the danger coming. The younger twin looked first to his eldest brother, then to his youngest brother, and then to Kalin, whom he answered by saying, “Torches. Carried by a mob of angry villagers.”

Estel didn’t know which to fear more – the mob of villagers who might seek to harm them, or the torches they carried that might obliterate Legolas’ disembodied faer.


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, the phrase in this chapter, ‘Give a rangar and they’ll take a lar,' is a play on the idiom, 'Give an inch and they'll take a mile.' A rangar is about 38 inches and a lar is about 3 miles, both of which are Middle Earth (Númenórean) units of measurement for distance. It amused me to convert that phrase -- I laughed and laughed when I wrote it!
> 
> The next chapter to be posted is the chapter I have been waiting to post since I started this whole story! I hope it is a good read when it comes. I'm kind of nervous about it. 
> 
> Thanks for reading. :)

Aragorn strode back the few steps to Legolas, where his broadsword laid in its scabbard. He had taken it off when lying down with the Wood-Elf and left it close at hand – he might soon need it in hand, if his brothers’ and Reana’s reactions to the oncoming swarm of torch-carrying villagers proved to be apt.

“Jakob, Halbarad, Tomas, and Wendt are riding in the front of this mob,” Elladan observed, though he said this as if each of the man’s names were expletives, spitting the names from his mouth, as one would sour milk.

“They can’t be leading this,” Elrohir argued to his elder brother, knowing just what Elladan was intimating, though it took Estel a moment to realize Elladan thought his fellow Rangers and the blacksmith might be part of the mob.

 _No, they have come to try to diffuse this, or they tried to ride ahead to warn us but could not leave to get here quickly enough to do so,_ he decided for himself. He hoped this was the case, at any rate, for if his fellow Watchers had brought this trouble to them, he would show them the error of their ways in the bloodiest way possible. Estel shifted from foot to foot, his mind beginning to clear as the possibility of battle fell over him. Long had he adopted the ability to push aside all worries and thoughts other than how to survive and defend when faced with the likelihood of combat.

In affirmation of Aragorn’s conclusion, Elrohir then rejoindered to his twin, “Look. They lead our horses while riding their own. And all the belongings we left at the schoolhouse are strapped upon them.”

Elrohir did not speak of the horses they had ridden to the farm, which they had borrowed, but the mounts the Noldor had ridden here from Imladris, which they had left in the stable at the school to allow their steeds to rest. As his fellow Rangers came into the barnyard, Estel could make out his and Legolas’ bags strapped to Reana’s horse. _Halbarad has prepared for us to leave in a hurry, if necessary,_ he fretted. Even if Halbarad’s foresight proved to be useful, the need for this prudence did not bode well. Aragorn ambled back to stand beside Kalin, whose interest was still captivated by the coming danger and not upon his Prince, as it had been for hours. Of course, now Kalin was concerned for his charge’s body’s welfare in a different way, so was no less transfixed upon his Prince’s protection than before, just in a different manner.

Halbarad paused at the fence where Arato and the borrowed horses were tied, pointed to them and gave Tomas and Jakob some order, and then galloped ahead with Wendt to where the three brothers, Elleth, and two Wood-Elves were in the fallow field. As they watched, Tomas and Jakob untied the horses at the fence and adjoined their leads to the others so that they could lead all the horses, before they came after Halbarad and Wendt at a slower pace to allow for the pack of mounts following behind them.

 _They carry torches,_ he thought just in time to keep Halbarad and Wendt from coming too close to where Legolas laid with their lit torches in the hands not holding their reins.

Estel could still feel the Silvan Prince. He knew his lover’s faer was not in the Halls of Awaiting but amongst them. Whether this meant the Wood-Elf was sentient as was Elise, the Ranger did not know, but he was not taking any chances. Thus, he ran out towards the two Edain, heedless of the hazard of being caught underfoot of one of the horses, and called to them, “Halt! Come no closer!”

Halbarad and Wendt pulled their reins hard, earning both riders aggravated whinnies from the horses they rode. Estel dodged the clashing, powerful hooves of Wendt’s dray horse, who was unaccustomed to such sudden commands and more likely used to the plodding pace of pulling a cart.

“Your torches,” he shouted as he grabbed the purchase just above the bit on the blacksmith’s horse so he could force the dray to stop its aggravated tossing of its head. “Drop your torches. Put them out.”

The two men looked at each other in confusion. They were under the impression the torches made them safer because they could cast askance any lingering haunt besides Elise – of course, this was the very reason Aragorn did not want them to come near, and so roared loudly, allowing no leeway for argument as he bade, “Put the torches out or I will put them out for you. Now.”

Neither Wendt nor Halbarad needed to be asked again, and both dropped their torches to the ground. Jumping down from his horse, Halbarad looked back to where the villagers, who were all on foot, were just now turning onto the dirt path leading up to the barnyard, while after dismounting, Wendt stomped upon the torches’ flames to squash them, ere he shouted back to Tomas and Jakob, “Aragorn says put your torches out!”

Luckily for the two straggling Rangers, they did not argue either, as Estel was in no mood to explain right now. Jakob and Tomas dismounted, as well, and walked the small herd of tethered horses closer but to the side of the others so the animals would be out of the way. Legolas’ faer’s safety ensured for the nonce, Estel counted the torches on the road as quickly and accurately as he could, determining, _Thirty or so villagers, if they are all carrying torches, that is. We are outnumbered three to one, or thereabouts._

Clearly wanting to ask why his Chieftain demanded they get rid of their lit torches, Halbarad shook his head at seeing Aragorn’s fierce demeanor and instead took up the topic of immediate importance. With a shamefaced Wendt trailing behind him, the grey-haired and harried Halbarad came to where Elladan, Elrohir, Kalin, and Reana all stood in a line, waiting only until Aragorn joined them ere he began, saying without prelude, “While Jakob was in the schoolhouse telling Tomas and I what was happening here, the menfolk were outside badgering Wendt for information. By the time we came out to speak to them, they were beyond riled. I tried to calm them but I could not contain their unrest and need to take action. And so they’ve come to take matters into their own hands.”

Earlier, the twins had expressed their regret in not telling Wendt to refrain from spreading details of what was occurring at the farm; it seemed their worry had been well founded. The blacksmith’s dark skin was tinted a deeper color from the embarrassed flush upon his face. Still standing slightly behind Halbarad, he apologized, “I’m sorry. I tried to tell them we were taking care of it and not to worry. But everything I said just seemed to spur more questions, which I answered to try to calm them, until I ended up telling them everything.”

Without the particulars being stated, it was clear to Estel what had happened. Good-naturedly, Wendt had sought to appease his kith by assuring them the Rangers and Elves were burning Emler’s junk to remove the curse; telling them this or something like it had made the menfolk ask about the curse itself, for the villagers had previously known nothing about upon what their supposed saviors were blaming the deaths that had occurred over the last several weeks. Wendt had more than likely been badgered into explaining the curse itself, followed by what might have caused it, and unfortunately, disclosed who exactly the harbinger of this doom upon their settlement was. By the time the Rangers had come out of the schoolhouse to speak to the villagers, Wendt’s account had spread like wildfire, as gossip usually does, and Halbarad, Tomas, and Jakob could not have appeased their fellow Edain’s overwhelming terror even had they better news to tell.

Halbarad looked back to the road, causing all of them to do so, to gauge how close the mob was. Estel was worried to see the first of the menfolk were at the bonfire. “Wendt told them you all were burning everything you could find that might be the cause of the imprecation upon Elise,” Halbarad explained, speaking quickly to pass on his information before it became too late for civil discussion, as some sort of action would soon be needed. “They took up the very torches I had them make last night to leave along the roads for Legolas and Jakob, when they went patrolling for the haunt. They’ve left the womenfolk behind, thank the Maker, so if there is bloodshed, we won’t have the women’s blood on our hands, but there were calls to burn it all, Aragorn. The house, the barn – they won’t be settled until they’ve burnt everything.”

By now, Jakob had passed off to Tomas the leads to the horses he had been charged with directing to follow behind, and he came to stand at the end of the line made by the Elves and Estel. Once more tugging at his braided beard – doing this so fiercely Aragorn thought he might yank it right off his chin – Jakob was peculiarly not smiling when he finished up their hurriedly woven tale. “We wanted to make it here before them to warn you, but Halbarad suggested we get ready to leave if need be, if they decided to turn against us after they’d had their fill of pyromancy and destruction. We gathered up our own belongings along with all of yours, got the horses, appropriated a few supplies of food and water from their stores, and made haste here. And have only just got here before them.”

The throng of torches was now flocked together around the bonfire. The men of the village – and they were indeed all men, with none young enough to need to shave more than once a week, to Estel’s relief – were communing at the bonfire and looking about, as if they had no clue how to continue now they were here. _They will soon have a leader, some rebel rouser who will incite them into further trouble,_ Aragorn knew, _if they don’t already._ He had seen mobs before. Once the vitriol and bloodthirst of anger, fear, or hate began to rage in a man’s veins, it needed outlet; however, in Estel’s experience, most men were peaceful and hesitant even then, and would need a push in the direction of ruin or death.

“I’m sorry,” Wendt said again. He shuffled his feet in the etiolated grass, his tallness making him look like an overgrown child as he sought the forgiveness of those around him, whose respect he had earned today and feared to lose. “I never thought they would do this kind of thing. I’ve known these men my whole life…”

“If it comes to it, what are you willing to lose?” Elrohir asked the blacksmith. Everyone except Estel and Elladan looked to Elrohir in wonder at this odd question. Elrohir’s brothers, though, knew just what Elrohir was asking, for it was on their mind, also. “These are your friends and neighbors, your customers, your kith. And this is now your farm, with your family’s bodies inside the house. What are you willing to lose?” he asked again.

In the barnyard at the fire, a short, skinny man with a back stooped from years of bending over fields was speaking loudly to his fellow villagers. _And there he is. The man who will lead them into setting it all ablaze, and perhaps lead them into their deaths,_ he recognized. If the villagers came towards Legolas with the torches, Estel would cut them down. If any of them hurt his brothers or fellow Rangers, he would cut them down. In fact, with his nerves frayed as they were, Aragorn thought if the menfolk so much as looked at him oddly, he would cut them down.  

When Wendt – and most of the others, as well – only stared at Elrohir in confusion, Elladan explained on his twin’s behalf, “The house, the barn? To stop these men, there may be violence. Is this house and barn worth killing your kith? Which are you willing to lose? Your family’s farm, your life, your kith’s lives? Decide quickly, so we can decide whether to stand with you.”

Shaking his head firmly in horror at the question before Elladan even ceased speaking, the blacksmith was adamant in his denial. “No blood need be shed. Not for any of it. They can burn it all. Except the bodies,” Wendt was quick to amend. He stepped out from behind Halbarad and toward Elladan, reaching out to the eldest Noldo as though he might seize his arm, though he let his hand drop when Elrohir’s easy stance rapidly switched to vigilance in silent but instinctive, aggressive protection of his twin.

The blacksmith went on, “Jenafer, Galeb, little Galeb, and Elise’s bodies are all in the house. And Emler in the barn. It’s not right to burn them. I want to bury them, as we do around here, to put them back in the dirt they toiled, as is our way. Please,” he pled, giving each Elf and Adan the same beseeching, wide-eyed look, evincing to Estel how Wendt assumed they would turn against him or turn him away – perhaps for having caused this problem or perhaps because he was not one of them. “Just help me convince them to leave my family’s bodies be.”

Aragorn let out a breath he’d not been aware he was holding. It was good Wendt was not planning to die over the farmhouse and barn. Although Elrohir and Elladan had asked the smith if he were willing to fight for the buildings and their contents, none of the Elves nor Rangers would have killed or sacrificed their own lives over the house and barn that by all rights were now Wendt’s to claim. And while none of them wished to kill or be killed to preserve the dignity of Wendt’s kin’s corpses, they would do their best to talk the menfolk into letting Wendt remove his family’s bodies before they set fire to the buildings. If talking didn’t work, then Estel didn’t know what his brothers would agree to, but he would not allow his Rangers to die for corpses.

“Then let us hurry,” Halbarad suggested and began walking away before any could argue with him. “That one,” the elder Adan said, pointing to the group as a whole but they all knew he spoke of the gangly, short, skinny man who was rousing the villagers’ choler even now, “was the one who provoked the rest into wanting to burn it all. We need to reason with them,” he went on, his voice growing softer as he and Elladan, Elrohir, Jakob, and Wendt took off across the field.

Upon seeing her twin Lords heading towards the fired up mob of Edain, Reana trotted to catch up with them, while Tomas remained as he was in holding the leads of the harras of horses. Kalin and Estel stayed where they were, beside Legolas, with neither speaking of their intent but both deciding separately that the Prince’s body – and his faer, if Estel were correct – needed to be guarded. In trepidation, the Ranger watched his brothers and fellow Rangers approach the menfolk of the settlement. His motley group of companions were all armed, including Wendt with his mace at his waist, while the villagers were armed with only torches and whatever daggers and utility knives they carried on their belts.

Weeks of uncertainty, deaths of loved ones and neighbors, and terror over the unknown had simmered in the villagers’ hearts and minds, and all of this was now boiling over. Who would be burnt by it was yet to be decided.

Another horsed villager came up the dirt path, expertly pulling up just outside the group of men. Estel was unsurprised to see it was the village’s healer and herbalist, Liandra. The easily discernible figure dismounted with the help of a young man nearby ere she strode up to the stooped over villager who even now was still rousing the others. She grabbed the man’s arm and shook it roughly. Aragorn could not hear what she said, but it was easy to tell the healer was livid.

 _Maybe she can talk some sense into them before anything horrific happens,_ he hoped, but despaired of this proving true.

“Be at ready,” he told the sentry, who truly did not need to be reminded of this, though it made Aragorn feel better to say it. The Ranger adjusted the scabbard of his broadsword so the weapon’s hilt was just where it normally lay, such that he would not be impeded by fumbling for the hilt if he needed to pull it quickly. “If any of those men attack my people,” he warned Kalin, speaking of his brothers and his Rangers, “then I will join the fray. No matter what happens, please, Kalin, stay here with Greenleaf. And let no light come near him.”

The Silvan did not respond. Aragorn did not require for Kalin to agree. Kalin believed Estel when the man told the Elf that his Prince’s faer was lingering nearby, and of course, he would let his charge’s body come to no harm, whether Legolas’ faer inhabited it or not. The sentry and Ranger watched as Liandra and Halbarad reasoned with the villagers – or tried to, at least. While Aragorn could not hear what was said, Kalin heard, and repeated it back in paraphrasing to the Adan without needing to be asked to do so.

“They are trying to calm the men,” the Wood-Elf told him. Kalin gave an unamused snort, stepping closer to Estel such that their arms bumped together while saying in a near whisper to the human, “Can you see how wary the men are of your brothers and Reana? Even without their weapons drawn. These men are more disquieted by the Eldar than your two Rangers.”

This was said without rancor, naturally, and was expected, for anyone and everyone who had heard stories of olden times would be aware of the fighting prowess of the Eldar. Indeed, as he and Kalin looked on, the twins stepped forward to speak to the menfolk, and those Edain in the front of the group all stepped back at their approach – save for the stooped over man who had taken to leading them. This Adan tried to straighten his perpetually bent back, smoothed the scant hair atop his balding head, and crossed his arms over his chest to give off the appearance of a dignity and capableness that Estel doubted he possessed in the subject of battle. Although, since the villagers usually defended themselves from raiders and Orcs, Aragorn could not discount the men’s abilities in fighting.

Overhead, the clouds shifted enough for the moon to cast a silvery pall over the farm, the people on it, and as Estel looked back to check the state of his lover, upon Legolas’ pale face. _If you have any plans to try to end Elise, meleth nin, I hope you are working on them now._ Some niggling, aggravating part of his mind suggested Legolas was truly dead and he soon to follow; Estel steeled himself against listening to this naysaying opinion, which unsurprisingly sounded like Thranduil’s smug and all-knowing voice. He turned back to see what was happening across the way, but only after giving his lover a fond and loving smile, assuring himself, _No, Greenleaf is here. He will not give in so easily to death, not when I am in danger. Not if he can help it._ Time and time again, Legolas had survived beyond what most Elves would wish to live through, all to see Aragorn safe. Perhaps it was selfish of Estel to hope for Legolas to do so again, but he could not help it – not if it gave the Prince a chance to come back to his rhaw, or if nothing else, to release his faer to the Halls of Awaiting rather than remain as a haunt.

“Elladan is telling them to burn the house and barn if they wish, saying Wendt does not care and nor do we, but that we have already burnt anything of import inside. And Elrohir,” the sentry relayed, pausing to let the younger twin finish speaking. “Elrohir asked only for Wendt to be allowed to remove his kin’s bodies for proper burial rites.”

It seemed the villagers were riled but not yet beyond reason, for despite their leader’s apparent dislike of this idea, the others were quick to agree. Not waiting for the men to change their minds, Wendt, Elrohir, Reana, and Jakob went inside the house for the bodies of Jenafer, Galeb, little Galeb, and Elise, while Halbarad and Elladan went into the barn for the body of Emler. This left Liandra alone, standing before the men; if she feared her fellow villagers’ apparent unrest and violent mood, she did not show it, but stood firm before them. As might a schoolmarm or a disgruntled mother, Liandra scowled at the men – many of whom she had brought into the world as a midwife or had treated for illness, if not their loved ones. Estel observed how some of the men could not meet her gaze, for they were ashamed she should be witness to their baser desires for destruction and revenge.

Even from where he stood in the field, Estel could hear the uproar as Elladan and Halbarad carried out Emler’s body, Halbarad holding the corpse by his tunic at his shoulders, and Elladan holding Emler by his feet. There were calls to burn it, as well, for being the one to have brought this curse to their settlement, with the lean, stooped over man shouting the loudest in hopes of enflaming his fellows into action. When one man walked closer to where Elladan carried Emler’s feet, the twin immediately dropped the dead man’s legs and casually laid his hand upon the haft of his sword. The audacious man comically stopped midstride upon seeing this, raised his hands in conciliation to Elladan’s silent admonishment, and stepped back at once. Before Elladan could pick Emler’s feet back up to help Halbarad, Elrohir carried out Elise’s body, and as the younger twin walked cautiously down the limestone slab steps, more outcries came from the villagers, who called to burn the girl’s corpse. Upon seeing this, Elladan left Halbarad to drag Emler on his own so he could have his hands free to defend Elrohir should one of the menfolk get the idea Elrohir was defenseless with his arms full of decaying, dead human child. The elder Noldo stood between the mob and the gate leading into the yard of the house, watchful and imposing.

 _Just let them take the bodies,_ Aragorn prayed.

If the villagers would grant Wendt this, then he could see little reason for the two groups of people to come to violence once the men had carried out their task of pyromancy upon the farm itself. He fought the urge to leave, to stand with Elladan in protecting the others. He didn’t want to leave Legolas, no, but moreover, Estel feared his own temper – worn as it was – would be more easily stirred than Elladan’s temper, and the Adan might start the brawl he was longing to avoid. Elladan was facing around thirty men with no fear; Elrohir would come to his aid if need be, as would Halbarad and Jakob, but Estel did not want for any of his people to be harmed in the least. Not even a bruise. Not a little scratch. His tattered temper would fray completely then, and all Udûn would break loose.

Next from the house came the blacksmith, followed by the Elleth and Jakob. His brawny arms showing no effort in doing so, Wendt carried Galeb’s corpse alone; Reana carried Jenafer effortlessly enough, her Elven strength making it an easy job; and Jakob came out with a small bundle wrapped inside a blanket, in which the body of the baby was ensconced. With Elladan lingering behind the group, walking backwards to keep his cool and assessing gaze upon the men, the others carried the corpses to the field, as far away from the barnyard as were Legolas, Kalin, and Estel, but far enough off to the side so the smell of the corpses was not overpowering where the two Silvan and Adan were.

A moment later, the first flame was laid to the house. Using their many torches, the menfolk began small fires wherever they could, throwing the flaming, oily, cloth-wrapped sticks onto the thatch roof, running inside to toss them upon the flammable cloth of the beds and chairs, and one was even thrown into the cellar, although since it was a dirt floor and held nothing, Aragorn imagined this particular torch likely sputtered out without effect. Others of the villagers began on the barn; they threw their torches into the hayloft and into the hay-filled stalls. Whoops and hollers of ignoble enjoyment drifted upon the smoke and wind to where Aragorn stood in impatience to see this done, for the sooner the men were pacified by the incineration of all this, the sooner they would leave – or so he could wish.

Estel glanced at Kalin. The Wood-Elf looked back at him, and in Kalin’s eyes were reflected the orange flames from the buildings. He had meant to ask the Elf if he would remain by Legolas for a moment before he realized the silliness of his asking when the answer was clear; meanwhile, Kalin had a question for Aragorn. “If we need to flee, do you think Legolas will be able to follow us?”

He had no idea. The same naysaying voice inside his stressed mind told him the only way the Prince could follow is if they took his body, for it was all that was left of the Elf he had once held, kissed, loved, and to whom he had given himself, body and soul. “I do not know. Elise was able to come and go wherever she pleased. If Legolas can do the same, then he can avoid the light the best he can, and follow us if we must flee.”

Satisfied with this answer, Kalin walked off to kneel beside Legolas, where he began to adjust his charge’s limbs, bending and shifting them to keep the circulation of his blood flowing. _If we do need to flee,_ Estel thought while watching the sentry work, _then we need to be ready to leave in haste._ This in mind, he walked the short distance to where Tomas stood, the leads of the front horses in hand, while the others were all tied to each other’s saddles to form three lines of mounts. Hard-working, loyal, but a very quiet man, Tomas had been standing silently during all this, offering no opinion and doing nothing except as he had been tasked, such that Estel had nearly forgotten his presence. Tomas nodded a solemn greeting to his Chieftain when Aragorn approached.

“Take the horses into the copse,” Aragorn ordered of his underling. He strode close enough to clap a hand upon the man’s shoulder. Although as seasoned and capable as the rest of his Rangers, Tomas was a fretful man, and if left with nothing to do, would eventually begin to fall into the trap of worrying himself into a frenzy. “Water and feed them if you have anything with which to do so, or let them graze, but keep them at ready for a quick departure. And stay out there with them. We will need each one and cannot afford the time to hunt for a stray horse.”

Without speaking, Tomas nodded his obedience and began to lead away their mounts, including the borrowed ones. As Aragorn had told Tomas, they would need every one of those horses since the Prince and Ranger had been on foot for their journey to the village. It would also do to keep Wendt’s horse at ready for the blacksmith to flee if needed, and the extra horse could carry their possessions. Once far enough away, they might release the extra mounts to return to the village. The Rangers didn’t need to be branded as horse thieves as well as troublemakers by the people of this settlement.

He watched Tomas until the man was beyond view, hidden by the trees in the coppice. Then, Estel went back to Legolas and Kalin, who was now gathering together all the small items they had taken from the twins’ satchels earlier while wrapping Legolas’ ribs. Kalin even began to prepare his Prince to be carried, his thoughts mirroring Aragorn’s thinking in wanting to be absolutely ready for them to leave the moment it was deemed necessary. Estel stood beside the two Silvan, first watching Kalin check the bindings upon his Prince’s ribs, and then watching the rapidly spreading fires in the buildings across the field. The flames the men had started in the house were slower to pick up than the ones in the barn, as the dry hay in the outbuilding made the flames spread dangerously quickly. Estel watched as one man ran from the barn just a moment before the thatch roof of the building collapsed down in the doorway, with the rest of the roof following section by section.

Liandra began away from her kith with the stooped over man beside her, both headed to where the twins, Reana, Jakob, and Halbarad remained by the corpses. The healer and villager argued as they walked, but stopped once they were near to the dead. Aragorn was startled when Kalin suddenly spoke up right beside him, for he had not noticed the Silvan’s approach. The guard again relayed to Estel of what the others were speaking, telling Aragorn, “The villager has asked for Liandra to search the bodies for anything they might need to burn. Wendt has agreed. To keep the men from burning the bodies themselves.”

After some discussion of which Kalin did not impart, the Rangers and Noldor began to aid Liandra in searching the corpses, though Wendt, understandably, did not help. The poor man could likely not force himself to handle the bodies of his kin any more than needed, and especially not for such a demeaning task. With everyone else busy appeasing the villagers by doing as asked, the stooped over man began walking their way, towards where Kalin and Estel stood side by side at Legolas’ feet. To Estel’s relief, the man did not carry a torch of his own; else, Aragorn would have needed to intercept the man to keep the illumination away from Legolas. It was pointless to remind Kalin to be on his guard, for the sentry always had his Prince’s safety foremost in his mind, but Estel _did_ tell the Wood-Elf, “Whatever he says or does, do not speak to him nor touch him. The slightest thing might goad the others into greater violence.”

Aragorn received only a grunt in response but he knew Kalin had heard him, though whether the Wood-Elf would listen was another matter.

The man halted a few feet away from Estel. Busy searching the bodies, his brothers had not noticed this man’s approach. If they had, one of the twins would have come over already to assist Estel in keeping the peace, since they knew Aragorn’s patience was at its end.

“I am Randric,” the villager offered as he sauntered up to them with the ease of someone who believes he is in charge because he has the upper hand. Randric gave Estel a congenial enough smile, though it bordered upon a smug smirk, looking to Aragorn like his smile needed for Estel’s fist to clear it from Randric’s face. “And you are Aragorn,” the villager added. “Not sure we’ve met,” he said to Kalin.

Now that Randric was closer, Aragorn remembered the Adan’s face, for he had been one of the men to walk with Estel, Legolas, and Jakob when Jakob led the Elf and Ranger into the village the morning before, when first he and Legolas had arrived. Aragorn recalled clearly how Randric had stared at Legolas; the man was doing so now, gawking at the Prince and Kalin as if they were strange species of cattle, rather than Elves with more years of life between them than all the villagers here on the farm combined.

Kalin did not respond by offering his name, nor did Estel do so on the sentry’s behalf. Randric’s smile changed into one of commiseration when he looked to Estel again, his eyes rolling slightly at his fellow Adan, as though he and Aragorn were friends merely because they were both humans, dealing with ornery Elves. With a slight shrug of his shoulders, Randric brushed off the slight and continued, “Listen: we mean you Rangers no harm. Nor the Elves. None at all. We just want this over.”

Estel nodded his agreement, forced his hand away from his broadsword’s haft – where it had been trying to grip the hilt in a show of his own orneriness for Randric – and replied honestly, “We want the same. For the curse to be broken. And for no one to be harmed.”

Randric’s smile grew, though it never quite reached his calculative eyes. This one might have been a farmer, but he was no less intelligent for his years spent in menial toil. “I just came out here to make sure you didn’t have anything from the house or barn on you. No trinket or knife, scrap of cloth for a bandage, bowl for water, or whatnot. We want it all burnt, you see,” he explained patiently, helpfully, as if the villagers and the Rangers and Elves were not facing a potential impasse. Randric began walking towards Legolas while he asked, “Do you mind if I look for myself? Got to keep the younger ones from worrying and getting riled up about it.”

Behind the Ranger, Kalin literally leapt from his knees, where he had been kneeling beside his Prince again, and to his feet. The Elf stepped forward, the flash of his sword just a glint in the corner of Aragorn’s eye. Estel stepped between the two; luckily, Kalin stopped pacing forward ere he ran Estel through with his outthrust weapon. Unable to keep the growl from his voice, Aragorn told Randric, “We mind. None of you will touch him.”

Troubled but seemingly unafraid – which was stupid, in Aragorn’s thinking, since Kalin would not hesitate to kill the man, consequences to himself be damned – Randric held his hands up in submission. He gave a light laugh, ran a soot-covered hand through his scant hair, and thereby smeared the soot over the sheen of sweat on his scalp. “Fair enough. Fair enough. Can Liandra look then? We trust her. She’s one of us.”

If anyone other than one of his brothers or friends had to touch Legolas, then Liandra was a fair choice. Estel didn’t like capitulating to Randric’s demand. He worried to do so, as the more they conceded to the villagers, the more they would ask. It was as he had heard Mithrandir once say of mollifying the masses, ‘Give a rangar and they’ll take a lar.’ Aragorn also knew they needed to pick their battles right now, and if the men would be satisfied with Liandra examining Legolas for any artifacts from the house, then Estel would allow it just to keep the peace.

“That will be fine, though she will find nothing upon him from the house or barn,” he replied, though in truth, he had no idea if this was accurate. In fact, having Randric question him on the matter made Aragorn question it, as well, and he wondered if Legolas might not have picked up something from Elise’s corpse while carrying her or from the house while talking to her. A sliver of hope broke open in his darkly mordant mind, making him glad Randric had come to speak to him, for if Legolas held something in his possession needing to be destroyed, then perhaps the curse could still be lifted. It was a longshot, he knew, but other than hoping for his Greenleaf’s faer to work on their behalf, it was all he currently had as far as plans go.

Randric smiled again, this time looking self-satisfied but genuinely pleased at their cooperation. “I will send her over when she is done, then.”

Normally, Aragorn considered himself to be thick-skinned and not prone to outbursts of anger, but the villager’s idiotic grinning was getting under Aragorn’s presently very thin skin. When Randric only stood there and continued his awful, aggravating grinning, Estel knew he had to say something to wipe the smirk from the man’s face; else, his fist would do the work for him.

“We had this under control,” he told Randric. It was not entirely a lie. They had done all they could given the strangeness of the situation. If the menfolk’s decision to incinerate everything proved to work, then Aragorn would not complain, and he thought perhaps that he and his brothers might have chosen to do the same before the night was over. Without realizing his malicious intent, Estel took an intimidating step closer to Randric and added, “Keep your fellow villagers calm. You have accomplished what you came to do, but do not seek to further your agenda by offering harm to the Elves or the Rangers here. There is no need for it, and it will end in bloodshed.”

Finally, the man’s calm smile was broken. The moon was once more behind a cloud, which made Randric’s weather-beaten face look like a crumpled, filthy swatch of leather when the night’s darkness heightened the many wrinkles upon his visage as he scowled at Estel. “We have been calm for weeks. We will do what needs doing, since you Rangers have pussyfooted around for so long.”

“You’re wrong and ungrateful,” Aragorn argued back, his ire rousing further to hear Halbarad’s decisions questioned. “Halbarad, Tomas, and Jakob came here of their own good will. Halbarad’s quick thinking to keep your people inside their houses, in the light at night, has saved countless lives. We did not bring this burden to your settlement and have risked our lives to try to relieve you of it.”

“Fair enough,” the man said again. His glower cleared from his visage and his self-righteousness lightened his anger, while his smirk returned. Randric gave Aragorn a farcical bow, as one might do to a nobleman one hates but cannot afford to piss off, ere he told Estel, “We appreciate what your Rangers have done. Say true, we do. But we’ve had enough of burying our people. This ends tonight. We will see to it.” Randric looked down to Legolas, his threat obvious when he said, “If burning the house and barn don’t work, then we will keep burning until we destroy what we need to.”

From behind him came a low growl, sounding to Estel like a rabid wolf he had once had to kill in the forest of Mirkwood while out hunting with Legolas. It pleased the Adan to see how Randric startled fiercely at the sound, his eyes flying open wide and his jaw slightly slack at hearing so animalistic a snarl. Forgoing Aragorn’s advice to remain silent and striding to stand in front of Estel, Kalin warned in the quiet, even voice Estel had heard so often before in Legolas, when the Wood-Elf was beyond mere anger and broaching upon violence, “If any harm comes to Aragorn, then I will tear you limb from limb. And should any harm come to the Elves here, should I happen to die along with my brethren, then you will find King Thranduil of Eryn Galen will join Lord Elrond of Imladris in wreaking havoc upon what is left of your village, haunt be damned. Not even the wild dogs will want to feast on your remains when they are done with you.”

Randric tried to regain his dignity by straightening his back but his attempt to stand upright failed, such that he stooped over into his usual posture with a stumble. The man’s eyes then narrowed upon Kalin, judging the weight and accuracy of Kalin’s threat – he found no mendacity in the Wood-Elf. Finally, Randric nodded and waved his hand as if to wave off the warning, though his hand and his gait were unsteady when he turned to walk away, back to the bonfire, without saying another word. He had forgotten to ask Liandra to check over Legolas, but Estel would see it done. He thought it a good idea, anyway.

Aragorn allowed himself to smile, despite the dire circumstances, as he had not liked Randric the moment he saw them the morning before and liked him even less now. Seeing the Adan afraid made him immensely happy. It might be bitter of him to feel so, but Estel could not care. Kalin remained standing in front of Estel and Legolas until Randric was back amongst his kith, where he began talking to them. The Wood-Elf had his head tilted towards the group of men to hear them clearly, and once they were finished listening to Randric’s report of what was said, he turned around to speak to Estel, telling him, “That Warg’s shit told the other men he frightened you into letting Liandra look over Legolas.”

The Silvan’s fair face was livid with a flush running up his neck, along his jaw, and tainting his ears to the very tips – so angry was Kalin. In fact, the last time he had seen the sentry this upset was months ago when Aragorn had revealed to Kalin how his Prince’s sentries had allowed their charge to roam Lake-town alone, which had eventuated in the Prince being attacked by the merchants in Kane’s wine and tobacco shop. Aragorn noted how Kalin’s hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides. _And here I thought I would need to check my own temper, when it was Kalin’s temper that needed to be minded._

With another growl stemming from the low part of the Elf’s throat, Kalin loped back to his Prince and dropped down to his knees beside him again. Aragorn heard the slight rustle of the dry grass, turned, and found his brothers and Liandra coming over to them. Yes, Estel was pleased at Kalin’s threat, for the petty part of himself that he tried to deny had liked Randric’s fear in the face of the Silvan’s terrifying wrath, which was why he was smiling vindictively and causing his brothers anxiety.

“Estel…what was that about?” Elladan asked. The elder Noldo walked directly to Aragorn, laid a hand upon his upper arm, and by this light touch, stabilized the human’s rampantly running irritation.

Quickly, Aragorn wiped the spiteful smile from his face and took a deep, calming breath. He paused only long enough to allow Elrohir and Liandra to join them ere he answered, “Randric came to ask if Greenleaf had anything upon his person from the house or barn. I agreed to let Liandra look, so if you would,” he inquired of the elderly healer, who nodded her willingness to comply.

Liandra knelt down beside Legolas and began her search. Elladan and Elrohir, however, now looked to Kalin to see the quiet wrath having overtaken the Silvan. Clearly disbelieving so simple an explanation, the two shared a knowing glance between them but did not voice their suspicions aloud. To Aragorn’s surprise, Kalin did not fuss over having Liandra near his Prince and in fact, trusted the woman enough to leave Legolas’ side to join the three brothers where they stood. Thus, with his twin brothers and Kalin, Aragorn turned back to the now blazing fire of the farmhouse and barn.

Wendt wandered over to them, stunned and still ashamed for his conviction he was the cause of all this. He said without preamble, repeating what he had earlier told them, saying again in hopes they would believe, it seemed, “I am sorry. I never thought they would do this. I never once thought they would act this way.”

Liandra, having finished her search of the Prince, came to comfort Wendt with an arm around his thickly muscled waist, which she used to hug him in motherly comfort. “Fear makes animals of us all.”

The menfolk of the village were stupidly standing in the barnyard near the bonfire. Embers were showering down upon them from the remnants of the thatch roofs and burning straws of hay were floating lazily in the air around them. Unless the cinders caught the dry grass of the fallow field afire, then he and his friends were safe where they were, and unaffected by the columns of smoke rising up from the structures, for the smoke was pushed northward by the night’s light breeze. The fire was the least of Estel’s worries. The light from the fire and torches and the coming dawn concerned him more, as did the potential threat of the villagers should their need to raze not end upon destroying the house and barn. Estel could not push from his mind the vague threat Randric had made while looking at Legolas. If Randric thought he might insist upon next burning Legolas’ body to ensure the end to the curse, then Aragorn’s broadsword would be coated in blood ere the night was over.

“I am sorry,” he told the blacksmith, surprising the man with his apology, and surprising himself by his saying it, as it had come unbidden from his lips. “For the loss of your family’s house and barn. And also for the loss of your family. I am only glad they agreed to allow you to bury them, as is customary in these parts, yes?”

Wendt took off his leather cap, pushed his roped hair away from his face, and replaced the cap with a tight yank. He nodded. “Yes. Thank the maker for that. But who knows? Perhaps burning everything as they seem intent upon doing will appease the men’s madness and perchance destroy that last bit of whatever it is keeping Elise from moving on.” The blacksmith glanced to Legolas and then to Estel, adding, “And perhaps it is not too late to save the two of you.”

 _Apparently, no one has told Wendt Legolas’ faer is gone._ The man’s words were a balm nonetheless, as it was this very reason causing Estel not to be sorry that the house and barn were burning, though he did feel sorry for Wendt to lose it. Truthfully, Aragorn rather wished Randric had gotten his way and the corpses had been burnt in the buildings, as well, so long as no one was hurt in the argument surrounding the issue. _But then, if Randric has his way, we may all end up on the pyre before dawn comes._

It seemed callous to say any of this aloud, so instead, Aragorn told the blacksmith, “Come morning, we will help you bury your dead. By then, I hope, the villagers will be tired and going home.”

Liandra, who still had her arm around Wendt’s waist, gave it a final squeeze before she sighed. Like a mother who must tend to each of her children’s needs in turn, the elderly woman took hold of the person next to her to offer comfort, as well, who happened to be Elrohir. It startled the Noldo to have Liandra wrap her arm around his waist as she had just done for Wendt, to give Elrohir a gentle and maternal hug, but reflexively – and perhaps a bit welcomingly, Estel noted – Elrohir returned it by embracing her around the shoulders.

“I suppose I had better go tell them I found nothing,” Liandra rued, as now that she was in the relative safety of the Rangers and Elves’ presence, she did not want to go back amongst the mob – kith or not.

That sliver of hope Randric had fostered upon mentioning Legolas might be holding something from Emler’s treasures was squashed. _It was too easy to be true, anyway,_ he chastised himself. _Nothing could ever be simple._

“I will go with you,” Halbarad offered, and then proffered his arm for her to hold. There were plenty of burrows and clumps of grass upon which she might stumble, so the healer gladly took it. Together they walked to the bonfire to speak to the men.

The light from the blaze was growing brighter, the two buildings having plenty of fodder for the blazes, but even still, some of the villagers were pulling off the planks from the simple fence around the houseyard and throwing them into the fire of the house. Randric and the other men were hooting and hollering in daft glee as their fellow villagers even pulled up the posts from the fence to toss into the flames. His brothers and friends stood with him in silence, keeping a vigil upon the actions of the villagers, though Kalin was once again beside his Prince in his own vigil over the rhaw Legolas’ faer had left behind.

The fire was primal, frightful, but also eerily beautiful. He almost wished he could stand beside it. In what he hoped to be a surreptitious manner, Estel pulled his cloak more tightly about his person. His shivering was beginning to grow unbearable. Soon, his teeth would start to clatter, he considered, which made him remember a particular time when he and Legolas had been caught in a snowstorm. Legolas had wrapped the young Adan in his cloak and held him close, sharing his interminable warmth from his hardier Elven body to keep the human warm. He wished wholeheartedly that the laegel was awake and well enough to do it right now.

Estel could still feel Legolas’ presence. He worried the illumination from the fire would grow too bright and drive away or dissipate Legolas’ lingering faer. _Is he standing nearby, watching all this? Is Elise here, as well, watching her fellow villagers destroy her family’s home?_ Since he could feel Legolas, Aragorn was certain the Elf must be close. He considered Kalin could be wrong; perhaps Legolas’ faer was not yet gone from his body, which was why Aragorn could feel his nearness. He almost wished this were true, for then, the Elf might still be saved. It was becoming harder for him to reconcile his perception of Legolas’ presence when he had no proof of the Silvan’s continued existence.

His brothers, Jakob, Reana, and Wendt began discussing what to do, though Aragorn only paid their conversation half a mind. Tomas was still in the copse with the horses, Halbarad and Liandra were walking back after speaking to the men, who seemed pacified from Liandra’s assurance of having checked the corpses and Legolas for anything left to burn. Kalin was now humming softly to Legolas. The moon was once more out from behind the clouds, and from its position in the sky, the Ranger counted down the hours until dawn.

 _Too few. Always I have been glad to see the sun rise another day. Not this night. I wish this night would last forever if it could keep you with us,_ he thought to Legolas in uncharitable greed to have his lover with him, even if it was only his soul. But he would never wish that on Legolas. He chastised himself, _Better to wish Greenleaf finds some way to aid us and thus aid himself._

“If it comes to violence,” Elladan was telling Jakob, “you and Kalin take Legolas into the trees. Get him onto a horse and take off towards the lake. Take Liandra with you, if she will go. Tomas can remain with the horses until it is safe for us to follow. We will meet you there when able.”

Everyone nodded to Elladan’s contingency plan, not questioning his taking charge over them. Aragorn might normally have wanted to go with Legolas should the need to flee come to pass, but his brothers knew he would not leave the farm if Elladan, Elrohir, or his fellow Rangers’ lives were in doubt, so they asked Jakob to accompany Legolas and Kalin instead. Estel was glad of it. Jakob and Legolas had only known each other for a day, but Legolas had earned Jakob’s respect quickly, and Aragorn knew the young Ranger would do his best to keep both Kalin and his Greenleaf safe, as would Kalin do for his Prince and Jakob.

“Meanwhile,” Elrohir adjoined, “I suppose we will just have to be patient, wait and see, and in the morning, after helping you bury your kin,” he told Wendt, “we will likely leave. There is nothing more we can do here, anyway, nor do I imagine our welcome in the village still stands. When we arrive home, after we bury our own dead when the time comes, we will speak to our father about all of this to see if there is some permanent means to aid Elise, should she still haunt the village.”

The twins turned as one to look at Estel, their sorrow matching upon their identical faces. They had no plan to save their Adan brother. At this point, they could only hope to arrive in Imladris with enough time to allow Elrond to aid the human, but even this was highly unlikely, and they all knew it. Of Legolas, they made no mention. To the twin brothers, the Wood-Elf was a lost cause, and they did not hold any hope for Legolas to end Elise or save Estel – not like Aragorn held.

Loud cheers of congratulations erupted from around the once more raging bonfire in the barnyard – the men were well pleased with themselves.


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felt kind of nervous about this chapter. Hopefully, it came out right and you will understand what is happening! If not, let me know so I can cry about it and delete the whole story in a fit of pique. Just kidding. Or am I? Thanks for reading!

Unaware of how he came to be there, he sat on his haunches in the etiolated grass of the fallow field, his arms resting over his knees, and his gaze glued to the brilliantly dangerous light of the fires of the barn and cottage across the way. He sat midway between where the copse of trees was situated between the field and the stone fence and creek beyond, and where his friends stood watching the fires the same as did he. He had a vague notion he had been sitting thusly for a long while, though time held very little meaning for him, what with all of his attention fixated upon the ember-filled sky above the licking, orange flames consuming the homestead of the Adan girl who had put him in this condition. Earlier, he had seen in his peripheral vision as Tomas led the horses into the copse, walking right past him without looking his way. While it had seemed odd to him for Tomas not to acknowledge his presence whatsoever, he had been too absorbed with the flames to care much. Even now, it took all of his willpower to pull his eyesight away from the inferno, but the moment he was able to wrench his regard from the stout and unforgiving illumination of the conflagration, he found his obscured cognizance increased in clarity – like how the night sky over the house became visible only when the wind chanced to push askance the clouds of smoke drifting hotly upward from the flames.

There was something he needed to do or say or see, some task of importance beyond whiling the night away enthralled by the burning buildings, but he could not immediately recall what it might be. There was only the fire for him; it was so very hard to turn away from it, but he stood and did so with momentous effort, and then, only because he heard Aragorn’s voice, which provided a much needed impetus for him.

 _Estel. I need to speak to Estel,_ he argued against the want to return his gaze to the fire. _Curse you, you fool,_ he insulted himself when he found his contemplation drawn back to the flames.

Why he was so mesmerized by the fire, he could not think clearly enough to reason out, but it was keeping him from his lover. He twisted his eyes away from the conflagration yet again and forced himself to tread closer to where Estel stood with the Noldor, Edain, and Kalin, all of whom stood together and none of whom seemed to notice his presence – or lack thereof, as the case was, since none seemed to care he was not standing amongst them but alone off to the side.

When he got close enough to see past the small throng of his friends and acquaintances, Legolas noticed a very outlandish sight – his own body, lying motionless upon the ground behind where Estel and Kalin were standing close in the comity of mourning.

 _Am I dead?_ the Elf wondered in utter disbelief.

He had known something was wrong by how everyone was ignoring him, but Legolas had been so awestruck by the fire that sussing out the cause for his lover’s overlooking him had been beyond his ability upon which to focus. In fact, even now he found he wanted to walk to the inferno – right into it – and let it swallow him up. He knew instinctively if he did so, his faer would scatter from the light cast ere he ever entered the flames, just as had the man’s soul the night before in the orchard, when Jakob had swung the torch about Legolas’ head to try to dispel Elise. He found his feet idling away from his friends, as if they intended to walk toward the burning house and barn – as if his faer were directing them, acting on some unfathomable drive to free itself from these earthly confines and allow it to release into the afterlife beyond.

He could scarcely recall what had happened just prior to finding himself sitting in the field, staring vacantly at the fires beyond. He vaguely remembered waking from pleasant dreams of Estel and his friends and family, after which was when he had spoken to Kalin and said his goodbyes, and then there had been nothingness – no fleshly input, no dreams or recollections, no awareness whatsoever. The next sentient moment he knew, he sat in the field, his eyes fixated upon the burning barn and house. And there he had sat for some unknown length of time. He was dead. He recognized this upon seeing his own body lying upon the ground, but it did not seem real to him.

 _I thought I was alive. Or at least, I didn’t know I wasn’t,_ the muddled Wood-Elf tried to understand, looking at his body in suspicion, some part of him thinking he may still be asleep and dreaming. _How long have I been dead? How long have I sat watching the fire when I ought to have been trying to help Estel and the others?_

His fellow Elves, the Edain, and especially Estel were melancholy over his death, he knew, but right now, they were looking not at him, but at the fire and crazed men rejoicing in its destructive force. Earlier, Legolas had noted how one of the men came up to Aragorn, and though the Prince had not been able to pay attention to what was said by the villager to Estel, Legolas had recognized the latent possibility of how the villagers might incite violence against his friends and lover. This, he would not allow.

The Elf began to walk closer to the others but found his legs were not moving. Looking down, Legolas recognized his booted feet – or what he sensed to be his feet, since in truth, his body on the grass nearby was what he was moving towards, and he just an incorporeal figment of what he once was – and the field under them, but he had not made any actual motion to walk. And yet, Legolas glided forward all the same, as though his legs and feet were moving to make it happen. When from the corner of his eye he discerned a single, long floating ember dance high upon the cool wind, his desire to see his own body, to make sense of his death, to comfort Estel, to warn the man, were once again nearly superseded by the intense longing to change course and make for the illuminatory fire, instead.

Suddenly, Estel turned away from the fire and looked behind him, wild-eyed and terrified, which made the Elf stop his forward motion and think, _I wish he could see me. I wish I could speak to him. I do not want to go without saying goodbye._

Perhaps he couldn’t speak to Estel, but Aragorn might speak to Legolas, at least, which he soon found happening, for the Ranger said to what to the others around him seemed to be thin air, “Greenleaf?”

_Does he know I am here? Can he truly tell I am near?_

The Wood-Elf felt a pang in his chest, where his heart ought to be, and as he had done so many times in recent months, the Prince reached up to rub at the stale twinge of sorrow lying under the muscle and flesh. Although there was some sensation of his hand moving across his torso, there was no beating heart beneath the false tunic and flesh underneath his hand.

Estel looked around the area with a faint smile of hope, which made the laegel smile in return. Again, Aragorn said to the nothingness beyond where he stood, his twin brothers on either side of him, “Greenleaf?”

Legolas saw the twins share a vexed look between them. _They think Estel has gone mad with grief. Can they not feel me as Estel does?_

His friends, who had known him for countless years beyond the few years in which Aragorn had known Legolas, ought to have had some sense of his faer’s presence – especially Kalin, who had spent more time with Legolas than the other three combined. As the Silvan watched, his sentry came forward to stand behind Estel, laid a hand upon the man’s shoulder, and asked in an expectant whisper, “Is he here? You are certain?”

“Brother, please,” Elrohir pled with Estel and took the Adan’s forearm, which he shook roughly in punitive unwillingness to accept the Ranger’s belief; meanwhile, Elladan turned to Kalin and scowled at him, saying simultaneously to Kalin as his twin spoke to Estel, “Don’t encourage him, nor get your own hopes up, my friend.”

Aragorn shook off both his brother’s hold and Kalin’s hand to walk forward, closer to where the bodiless Legolas lingered. The Ranger discounted those around him to argue, “No, I can feel him. He is getting closer, I swear it. Legolas is here.”

_He can sense me. Perhaps our faers are not tied in the manner of bonded Elven mates, but they are connected nonetheless, and he can feel me near._

A swelling, loving gratitude filled the laegel’s being with this knowledge. Legolas’ smile grew, while his love for Estel was an acute ache within what should have been his chest, which caused him to reach up to rub at it once more, and once more, he did so to no avail. The Elf desired to move closer, to force Estel into seeing him, or to try to speak to the man. His lover appeared on the verge of tears; Legolas could not bear it. He needed to comfort the human. He needed to assure Estel of his love for him and tell the man he had not forsaken him, even in death.

“No, Greenleaf.” Perceiving the specter of the Wood-Elf nearing, Aragorn swept his arms out, palms up, to stop the Elda. “Please. Don’t come nearer lest you come too close to the firelight. You have to stay away from the light,” the Ranger stressed, his face pinching into an expression of pain Legolas had never before seen on the Adan – an expression that only served to heighten the Elf’s need to go to the man, to ameliorate whatever was causing the pain, even while knowing he was the source of it.

His death had caused Aragorn this suffering and there was nothing he could do to fix it.

Realizing he would not be able to speak to Estel, Legolas tried nonetheless. If the man could sense his presence, then perhaps he could sense also the Elf’s professed love for him, but if nothing else, the Wood-Elf could give himself the comfort of saying it aloud one last time before he and Aragorn were parted for time without end. And so, Legolas said aloud to the Adan, infusing every word with the truth behind their meaning, “Ge melin, Estel. Ge melin, guren.”

To his delight, the aggrieved expression dropped abruptly from his lover’s whiskered visage, his smile returned, and the Ranger told his brothers and Kalin, “I think he spoke. Could you not hear him? He said something.”

Beside Estel, Elrohir was now weeping in sorrowful terror to have his human brother so taken with grief that the Adan was now willing to hear the Prince’s voice in the sough of the algid night breeze. However, Elladan was enraged for some reason Legolas could not understand; at least, not until the eldest brother grabbed Estel’s arm and yanked him about-face. “Stop, muindor. Stop this. Even if Greenleaf is here now, you should be telling him to go to the Halls of Awaiting, not asking him to risk being stuck forever as a ghost just to save your own hide.”

 _To save his hide? Is the curse not lifted from Estel?_ the Wood-Elf questioned. Elise had promised to relieve the Adan of the affliction upon him if Legolas remained with her, and while Legolas had been doomed to die anyway, he believed he was not doomed to remain upon Arda except by choice – a choice he would gladly see through if Elise would keep her end of the bargain. _I must find her. I must speak to her,_ he told himself, though even as the dreadful anxiety began to well within his ethereal being, he could not force himself to look away from the Ranger whom he loved more than his own life, or his afterlife, now. He could not yet bring himself to leave Estel.

“There are still the villagers we must think of,” the Ranger hissed in reply, once more yanking his arm free of Elladan’s hand. A bitter invective against the twin nearly loosed itself from Estel’s mouth, but upon seeing how Elrohir was weeping, albeit silently, Aragorn dropped his head and took a calming breath. Legolas observed as the Ranger struggled against the urge to turn back around, to seek out the wraith of the Silvan Prince. “I know you do not believe me, but Greenleaf is here. And while our hands are tied, he may still be able to stop anyone else from dying. You know if he can, he will. Legolas will never give up while I am still under Elise’s imprecation and while all of you and the villagers are in danger.”

No one could argue against Estel’s estimation of the Prince, for they all knew it to be true. Behind the brothers and sentry, the other Edain and Reana were now watching all this with bewilderment. The elderly healer, Liandra, came forward to pry Elladan’s hand from off Estel’s arm, which he had grabbed again the moment Aragorn pulled free the second time. Unwilling to hurt the woman, Elladan did not fight her doing this and even allowed her to grasp his youthful looking but much older hand in both of her own wrinkled, younger hands. Liandra patted Elladan’s fingers affectionately; this soothed the elder Noldo, just as Liandra hoped would happen.

To Aragorn, the woman said, “Your friend lying here. Legolas. Wendt said he was dying. His body still breathes and his heart still beats, as I have seen for myself while searching him a moment ago. But you say his soul is gone? How is this possible?” she asked, bringing Elladan’s hand with her own as she reached up to sweep aside an errant leaf of grass upon Aragorn’s tunic. “No one else lived this long after being touched, and no one else’s body lived while their soul lingered outside it, as far as we know. But Legolas’ body is alive and his soul has left?”

“His faer has departed,” Kalin explained on Estel’s behalf, and then, realizing the Adan woman would not know the Sindarin word, he amended, “His soul.” The sentry stepped back to address all those around him, all of whom stepped closer to form an irregular circle around Legolas’ body, at which some of them stared while the elder Wood-Elf expounded, “My Prince’s faer is here, Aragorn can feel it, and I believe him. And as Aragorn says, Legolas will not give in to the draw of the afterlife when Aragorn is still under Elise’s imprecation, nor while any of us are in danger, or the villagers. My Prince is a warrior, but his heart is filled with more compassion than is good for him,” Kalin told his audience with a fond, heart wrenching look down at the younger Silvan’s body. “There is still hope.”

Legolas thought that had he real eyes, he might weep to hear such kind words from Kalin. As it was, even without them, the Prince had the vague sensation of tears running down his face anyway, and when he wiped at his cheeks with one hand, he found a fiery, liquid red smeared across his hand.

_Like Elise. I must look like Elise, with burning coals for eyes and molten fire for tears. It is just as well Estel cannot see me. I would not have him see me like this._

“This is madness. I am sorry,” Elrohir contended in a whisper. Though no longer weeping, the younger Noldorin twin had not wiped the moisture from his face, and in the flickering, distant light of the conflagration, the tears glittered like dew upon Elrohir’s sallow cheeks. Now, they all stared down at Legolas’ inert body, which only amplified the Prince’s sense of incongruity, since he, too, gawked at his own dying rhaw along with them. “Estel, you cannot – ”

Elrohir didn’t get to finish his thought, for just then, a loud bang from afar caused the Edain to jump in startlement while the four Elves whipped around to the source of the noise with the preternatural speed of their kind. Something inside the house – a jar of lamp oil perhaps – had exploded. The menfolk cheered in their devastating revelry. With his attention back upon the fire, Legolas forgot everything but the need to join it, to let himself be consumed like the fodder feeding the flames. Only hearing Estel’s belabored sigh managed to draw him out of his intense trance, and he shook his spectral head to clear it; he needed to remain focused, to do as Aragorn had just told the others he would do by working both to save Estel and keep the innocent people here safe.

Searching for his lover’s presence, Aragorn once again looked into the emptiness of the dark of the night, which was made slightly deeper when a cloud slid over the meager slice of moon overhead. The man tried to step forward, perhaps feeling the same need to reach out for Legolas as Legolas felt to reach out to Aragorn. Elladan tugged his hand loose from Liandra’s motherly hold and grabbed the back of his human brother’s shirt to keep Estel from going too far, while cautioning the Adan, “If he is truly here, then you can’t just walk right into him, or you will end up shortening your life evermore.”

Of the Edain and Elves surrounding the Prince’s body, only Kalin, Estel, and Wendt seemed to believe Legolas existed still. He wished there was some way to show them so, if only to stop the twins from frustrating Aragorn, who did not need such treatment during what might end up being his own last night alive. But then, Legolas didn’t need their belief to act while he could, to try to ensure Aragorn’s survival and the village’s safety, and this was more important than soothing the Adan.

“Yes, you’re right,” Aragorn agreed to his brother’s point as he nodded his head, while conceding to him by not moving to get closer to the Prince again. Though he acknowledged Elladan’s warning, he did not recant his assertion of the Prince’s faer’s presence, and thus to Legolas, the Ranger said, “Just avoid the light, meleth nin, and speak to Elise if you can. I will not stop searching for a way to save you,” the man told the Wood-Elf, though since he could not see the Elf, Estel’s silver eyes flitted about the area uselessly.

“No, Estel. I will save you, I promise, if it is the last thing I do,” he argued, steeling his resolve against the overwhelming, instinctive need to run into the light like a moth hell-bent on being burnt by the flames of a candle. Again, he told the Ranger, “Ge melin, guren.”

When Aragorn tilted his head and his smile grew, Legolas knew he had been heard, even if his words were not understood. In fact, with some glimmer of amusement, Legolas saw Kalin’s jaw drop and his eyes grow wide. The sentry pushed between Elladan and Aragorn and walked straight towards Legolas, stopping just short of running right into his Prince, though his gaze was ever searching the field around him as had Aragorn’s done. He glanced back over his shoulder and told the others, “I heard him speaking. Tell me you heard my Prince.”

Elladan and Elrohir only looked to each other with identical anxiety marring their otherwise reconciled features, for they were now worrying Estel’s wishful thinking had tainted Kalin into contriving Legolas’ presence, as well. Reana, Halbarad, and Jakob only continued to look on with the same uncertainty as before, though at least Wendt seemed willing to believe, even if he had not heard the same as Estel and Kalin. With a quickness belying her age, Liandra hurried forward and slid her arm around Kalin’s waist. Too kind to do as he wanted in pushing her away – a desire Legolas could see upon his sentry’s face, for Kalin was eager to find the source of the voice he thought he heard – the Wood-Elf allowed Liandra to move in front of him and embrace him fully with both arms. He stood stock still and did not hug her back until the shorter woman laid her grey head upon Kalin’s chest; then, the Silvan lightly rested his hands upon her upper back and patted the Adan as if unsure what to do.

“I did not hear him,” she told Kalin, her voice muffled by the sentry’s tunic, “but I believe you. Both of you. Stranger things have happened these past weeks, and for both of your sakes, I hope he endures, for I know you both love him beyond reason.”

With this show and words of compassion, Kalin sighed and truly embraced the kind, elderly woman as she did him. While glad to see his friends were comforted by Liandra, Legolas was also ashamed for being the cause of their heartache, and somewhat jealous of her, as well, for the Prince wished very much to have the ease of his adulating sentry’s arms around him, instead of a night – and perhaps an eternity – of comfortless solitude. He stood there watching, while Kalin and Aragorn both looked back at him without truly seeing him, until Liandra pulled away from Kalin. She glanced towards the bonfire, her village’s menfolk around it, and the stupendous flames raging where a quaint but homey cottage and well-built barn once stood.

“You need to rest. All of you,” the healer ordered in a maternal fashion Legolas had heard often enough from Elrond, whose paternal but stern orders to his patients were rarely refused. “Come sit here by your friend and drink and eat. And let us talk,” she demanded, giving those around her, some of whom were her elder by thousands of years, no leeway for argument, “to see what can be done. There are hours yet before dawn. We cannot lose hope.”

Wanting to seek out his Prince still and unwilling to oblige but too kind to refuse Liandra’s gentleness, Kalin allowed the Adan woman to guide him back to where Legolas’ body laid on the faded grass. Wendt, Jakob, and Halbarad all sat down, with the latter pulling Elrohir’s satchel to him to find some dried meat and bread to pass around for a meager meal. Kalin aided the elderly healer into sitting before giving up and seating himself next to her, at the head of Legolas’ body, while the twins waited for Estel to sit ere they would do so themselves. Reana crouched at the Prince’s feet, facing the villagers and the fires to keep watch over everything while the others took their temporary ease.

“Come,” Elrohir told the man. He walked in front of Aragorn to block his view of the darkness where Legolas stood wishing with all his might he could be seen and heard by his lover and friends. “Sit and eat. If Legolas is here,” the younger twin said, clearly not thinking this possible by the doubt in his tone, “then he would not want for you to go hungry.”

While Elrohir removed Aragorn’s cloak, Elladan pulled a satchel to him and removed from it a spare tunic, which he and Elrohir pulled over the unresisting Estel’s head, before they replaced his cloak. This done, Aragorn allowed himself to be aided into sitting, though unsurprisingly, Aragorn also chose to sit by Legolas’ head, near to Kalin, but with a twin huddled on either side of him. The wracking shivers afflicting the Adan had slowed somewhat; yet, Legolas could tell his Adan lover was no longer as well as he had been that morning and since. The Prince wondered if his own death was the cause for the depletion of the light of the man’s faer, the light he had given to Estel, or if it was depleted from the curse itself. Either way, it appeared Aragorn would not last much longer.

He briefly thought to try to move something as had Elise in the house, when she had shifted her dolls around, to try to assure Aragorn before he moved on to trying to find Elise. The Wood-Elf looked about for anything he might try this upon, when a thin, reedy, and young child’s voice came from behind him, saying, “Legolas?”

The Prince spun around to face the person speaking to him, as he had not expected for anyone to be able to do so since none of the others could actually see his presence to know for certain he was there. He did not immediately see who it was to have said his name and did not recognize the voice, but a second later, a small and timid hand slid into his own. Legolas looked down beside him in surprise for anyone to have moved so fast to sneak up on him, only to find Elise standing at his hip, her faced turned up to his, and a shy smile gracing her pretty, ingenuous features.

“Hello,” she told him and grinned at Legolas’ obvious astonishment.

He smiled back at her, forgetting in that moment all the vile things she had done, including her being the cause of his death. Legolas meant to tell her hello, as well, but nearby, in the gathering around the Prince’s body, Elladan was quietly trying to convince Estel how Legolas was dead, how the man needed to calm down and accept the Prince will not return to his rhaw. And while Legolas knew this was true, his feelings were hurt to hear Elladan’s composed acceptance of it and his fatalistic attempt to persuade Aragorn of it, also. Once more, the Wood-Elf felt the overwhelming need to console Estel. He pulled his hand free of Elise’s and tried to move towards Aragorn, wondering again if he might be able to move something as had Elise earlier. It shocked Legolas when the girl reached out and clutched his fingers with both hands to pull him to a halt.

Her grip like a vise, Elise looked frightened to Legolas, who was further surprised at her ability to stop him so easily. But then, he realized, he had no actual physical strength upon which to rely, since he had no body to use to overcome her hold of him. Alarmed, though Legolas did not understand of what until she spoke, Elise beseeched the Elf, “No, you can’t go near him. You can’t touch him, or you will kill him.”

Hearing Estel say something in reply to Elladan, Legolas turned back to his lover and the Noldor whom he loved as brothers in time to see Elrohir encase his reluctant Adan sibling in a brief hug. _Why do they not believe him? Why can they not just let him have this hope?_ Waves of Aragorn’s anger swelled over the Elf, rousing his own ire. The twins meant well, but they were upsetting Estel needlessly, and Legolas was not pleased at this. Intending to set the Noldor straight, Legolas yet again tried to walk to the group around his body.

“You can’t,” Elise said again and tugged vigorously on his fingers – so forcefully it would have hurt, if his fingers had been real. “And you promised. You promised to stay with me!” she reminded the Prince in a puling, fuming shout.

Legolas could hear plainly the lachrymose tone hidden in the anger of voice. Turning back to her, he was unsurprised to see tears running down her cheeks, which is when he truly took note of the change in her. Before, Elise had appeared diaphanous and monochromatic, save for her fiery, rubicund eyes; now, however, the girl looked like a normal child. She was no longer transparent, but seemingly solid, her hair was the fine white-yellow of corn silk and caught the pale moonlight to make it sheen like hoary starlight, her stained sackcloth dress was a drab tan color, and her skin had a healthy tan, evincing how she must have loved to play outdoors. Her eyes, rather than appearing like burning coals, were the bright emerald of the leaves of summer clover.

_Just a little girl. She looks just like a little girl._

Seeing this, Legolas held out his own arm to inspect it.

 _No wonder it took me so long to realize I was dead,_ the Elf thought with slightly frenetic amusement. _I look exactly the same as my body._

But earlier, he had wept the molten liquid tears he had seen Elise cry while he was alive and seeing her as a haunt, so wondered how he looked to her, how he might look to anyone else should they be able to see him, or if all of this was somehow her doing, if she could alter their appearances at whim to make them more palatable to each other in their disembodied states. In the end, Legolas supposed it didn’t matter. A hiccupping sob drew the Elf’s attention away from his arm. Beside the creek, when first he saw into Elise’s mind, she had showed the Prince a memory of being picked up and whirled around by an older man. At the time, Legolas had thought it to be her father, and only later learnt it was her grandfather Emler in the recollection. By the creek that night, he had reached out for her to comfort her, to do as she wished, as Emler had done, but had been stopped by Aragorn pulling him back and away from the haunt.

There was nothing to stop him now.

Legolas slipped forward, wondering briefly if he could actually touch her as she had touched him, or if his hands would slide through her small body as her haunt’s hands had done to his actual body. He was glad when he felt her sturdy little arms under his fingers. She looked up to him, dropped her arms from across her chest to make them available to his hold, and gave him a tentative smile. Legolas was powerless but to beam back at the girl. Sliding his hands under her arms, he picked her up easily enough, causing her to laugh, and then, he spun around on heel, swinging Elise in circles by his light grip of her. Her hair flew out around her head and her childish, innocent giggling rang tumbling and true in his ears. When he slowed down and she put her feet down, Elise ran around in circles with Legolas’ hands still holding her upper arms, until Legolas picked up speed and she began flying through the air again.

Over the last couple of day, Legolas had several times compared Elise to a young Estel and found them similar; never did this seem truer than now, with Elise smiling and laughing at Legolas’ antics with the guileless adoration only a child can offer a worthy adult. The Prince felt a brief, blazing moment of all consuming happiness to realize he had caused the sweet young child this humble but besought joy.

After a while of this, after Legolas thought the child would surely be dizzy, he stopped, dropped to his knees, and then promptly began chuckling in amusement as Elise stumbled around in wobbly enjoyment. Once her head quit spinning, Elise ran up to the Elf and threw her arms around his neck, causing him to wrap his own arms around her in return. She rested her bony rear upon his forearm and sat down, her limbs so tight around Legolas’ neck that had he the need to breathe he would not have been able to do so. She clung to him as if afraid he would disappear, but given that this was a distinct possibility and may happen come dawn, the Elf could not blame her. The Wood-Elf stood with Elise still perching on his forearm like a tiny bird, while his other arm held her thin body tight to his chest.

 _How is this even possible?_ he wondered.

It seemed unfeasible for two bodiless beings to be able to interact as were he and Elise, but he could feel her slight weight in his arms, though he did not feel his muscles tighten in the effort to hold her. In fact, the more he considered his own form, the more he realized he felt little to nothing. There was no heat or cold, no sensation from the clothes he wore, no smell of the smoke in the air – the only thing he could truly feel was Elise, and that only barely, as she created no warmth against him, no pain from her cinching hold of his neck, and no pressure from her body pressed against his own.

He sensed her tiny chest hitch in a sob, causing him to wonder, _Is she crying?_

The Prince began to rub soothing circles on the girl’s back and rocked back and forth on his heels. “What is the matter, Elise?” he asked and then promptly felt fatuous, since the girl was dead, her family dead as well, and now her family’s home was being incinerated.

But when Elise leant back to look at the Wood-Elf, her tearstained face was smiling. “Nothing’s the matter. I’m happy you’re here,” she told him. “You will keep your promise?”

Legolas looked to Estel. For a split second, Estel looked directly at the laegel – or so it felt to Legolas. Startled by this, the Elf took a step forward, intending once again to try to communicate with his Adan lover, to succor the sorrow he could see in the man’s eyes and feel from the man’s soul, which was tied to his own in an intimate connection going beyond the mere bond of lovers, for he had shared his faer’s light with Estel.

Elise clambered down out of Legolas’ arms in a hurry. She took hold of the Wood-Elf’s hand and tugged him – hard. Stumbling without falling, the Elf’s feet did not move, he observed, but merely floated over the grass once more.

“No, you can’t touch him,” Elise reminded the Prince. She scolded Legolas, speaking in a tone the Prince was certain Elise had heard before from her schoolteacher or mother, “You must stay away from people and from the light.”

It was only this moment when his willfully suppressed discernment of his condition actually sunk in, _I have become like her. I am a haunt, just as is she._

The Silvan Prince’s mouth fell open in shock, for he finally understood that should he come into contact with Estel or one of his friends, he would steal the light from their souls, just as was done to him. The weight of this burden knocked him back a step; in a hurry, the Wood-Elf began backing away from where Aragorn stood with the Noldor, Kalin, and the Rangers. He would not take the chance of accidentally coming into contact with one of them. The whole time since forcing himself away from his mesmerization with the fire, he had hoped to find some means of contacting Estel; he now saw how dangerous a hope it was.

“It’s alright,” the girl told the Elf. She began to haul him away towards the copse, rather than towards the fire, which had been his general direction. “Don’t be afraid. I can teach you everything.”

How strange it was to the Elf for this slip of a girl, this specter, to offer him courage. Legolas nodded his head and tried to take in a deep, calming breath, only to realize he had no lungs with which to breathe. _This will take getting used to,_ he told himself, which once thought, caused the Prince to panic again, for as adorable as this child was, he could not imagine spending eternity with her while the world moved on without him. And should he eventuate into seeing the Halls of Awaiting, he risked her wrath against Estel, or if not that, then still, he would never see Estel again. A lancing agony coursed through him, flashing as lightning does, brief and brilliant, and then disappearing with the afterimage burned upon one’s eyes, though this excruciation was burnt upon his faer. _I don’t want to get used to this._

“I waited until the sunset to help you along faster,” Elise was telling the Elf, leading him by the hand towards the coppice of trees, “so you wouldn’t disappear on me. I think you would have lasted until dawn had I not touched you again, but I couldn’t wait any longer. You don’t mind, do you?” she asked although it was clearly too late for his opinion to matter.

Absently, Legolas shook his head and let her drag him where she might, his racing mind taking his attention away from all else but this: _Then she touched me again to finish killing me,_ he recognized and promptly worried, _She might have accidentally come into contact with Estel again, were she not careful. Please, don’t let her have touched anyone else. I must find some way to end this,_ he rued, while some vagrant part of his mind reminded him that his staying with her forever was the only recourse he had to see this was so.

Elise was still chattering away, telling Legolas, “You took forever to die, anyway. I didn’t know it would take an Elf so long! If you hadn’t done whatever you did to keep Estel alive, you might have lived for even longer. I’ve never met an Elf before you, and now I’ve seen five since your friends came here, too.”

The girl’s excitement was making her babble somewhat, and she didn’t give the Prince any chance to reply to what she said – not that he could find anything to say to all this. She spoke of his death as a matter of fact, as a joyful thing, which to her he supposed it was since she now had her eternal friend.

“Come on, slowpoke,” she joked, hauling him along by the hand. “I’ll show you how to get there fast.”

Before they had gone more than a few steps towards the copse, Legolas glanced back to where his lover sat with the others. The twins had moved away from Estel to keep watch over the villagers with Reana, leaving Aragorn and Kalin relatively alone at the head of the Prince’s body. Legolas heard the sentry ask Estel, “Do you still feel him?”

To the Silvan, his fellow Wood-Elf appeared optimistic as he waited for Aragorn to answer. The two spoke as privately as possible while surrounded by the others, both Wood-Elf and Ranger seated together at where the Prince’s head rested on a cloak on the grass, and while Kalin watched Estel in wait of an answer, Estel was once again scouring the surrounding area for sign of Legolas.

“Yes, I feel him, but it feels as if he were lessening. As if he were leaving,” the Ranger replied with worry, the horribly pained expression upon his face yet again.

“Maybe he looks for Elise,” Kalin offered as support to the man, who nodded distractedly and continued his fruitless search of the dark of night for his dying lover’s faer.

 _I can’t leave here. I can’t allow Estel to think I have abandoned him,_ he decided and tried to plant his feet to keep Elise from dragging him along any farther. While digging in his incorporeal feet didn’t exactly work since he had neither feet nor the strength to plant them in the ground, his will to remain still worked to stop him, and in doing so, when next she tugged Legolas’ hand, Elise’s own form bounced back towards the Elf with the adamancy of Legolas’ immobility. _And I must make certain Elise will keep her promise. They said Estel was not yet well. If nothing else, I have to know Estel will live._

“What’re you doing?” she inquired somewhat petulantly.

With these worries in mind, the Elf asked the child, “Just a moment, Elise. I must know. Did you remove the curse from Estel?”

Elise glanced over at the Ranger, not looking at Legolas when she answered, saying, “He will be just fine now, since you are staying with me. Right?”

He could protect the villagers by staying with Elise, but Aragorn had to be safe first. There was no other way Legolas could resign himself to this fate. He leant down to look her in the eye as he warned her gently, not wanting to upset her or incite her anger, but also needing more than just her ambiguous declaration, “I will stay with you as long as I possibly can, but only if you promise Estel will live. Do you promise? You must promise Estel will live, that the curse is gone from him.”

It was truly too late now to renege on his end of the bargain. The most he could do is threaten to walk into the light and cause his faer to dissipate if she did not keep her oath, but if he did so, he would be dooming himself to being unable to aid Estel at all, not to mention all the innocents in the village who would suffer for his folly. Moreover, he wasn’t sure how to determine if she were telling the truth without staying there to watch over the Ranger, and it was clear she had other plans. He would need to trust her word, it seemed, at least for now.

“I promise.” Taking his hand in both of hers again, the little girl smiled dazzlingly up at him. “Now come on. I want to show you something! We can come back in a little while.”

Legolas didn’t want to leave Estel’s vicinity but he also wanted to appease the haunt, and so thought to follow her for now, as the promise to return in a little while would give him time to learn if she told the truth, and also give Aragorn time to recuperate physically from the curse so Legolas would be able to tell if it was lifted.

“Alright,” he began to tell her, intending to make her promise they could come back shortly, but when he looked back for a final glance at his lover, the blazing farmhouse, barn, his friends, and Estel were all gone.

He was now standing on the bank of the lake – the very one he and Estel had camped beside for several weeks – with Elise standing beside him, smiling up at him with warm friendship.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know if you find any errors or if something seems wonky. I tried to edit this chapter but I'm doped up on cold medicine. Enjoy.

Estel paced the area just above the head of Legolas’ immobile, languishing body, while searching the field and copse beyond for some sign of his lover, although he knew he would see nothing, even should the Elf’s faer be there. Kalin watched the Ranger do this, his own nervousness mounting with each tight, quick circuit Aragorn strode through the tall, wasted grass, which Estel had tramped down into an irregular oval shape. He had told the sentry of his discernment of Legolas’ lessening and of his surety that the Prince was leaving the area, and though Kalin had tried to bolster both their hope by saying the young Silvan may be seeking out Elise, Aragorn’s frenzied uncertainty was only serving to undermine Kalin’s attempt to mollify them both. While Halbarad, Jakob, and Wendt were occasionally speaking quietly amongst themselves, they too found their regards drawn to Aragorn. His fellow Rangers had seen their Chieftain upset, anxious, and irate before, yet, never this badly. But then, Estel had never been forced to sit inactively by while Legolas died before him. By Elven standards, Legolas was already considered dead, even while his faer lingered still, and Aragorn’s mind could not comprehend nor admit the possibility of it.

And his brothers… well, Elladan and Elrohir, with Reana, were trying to keep watch upon the goings on of the village’s menfolk and the fires, but they could not focus upon the Edain of the settlement when a particular Adan garnered most of their attention. The twins were having a very hard time seeing their human sibling act this way, Estel knew, but he could not help himself, could not stop, and could thus not appease their worry for him. Meanwhile, Liandra had come to sit beside Kalin. The elderly healer seemed to have adopted their odd band of companions and was treating them all as though they were her children; right now, on one side she had an arm looped through Kalin’s arm, and through Jakob’s arm on the other side, though she rested her silver head upon the sentry’s shoulder in weary contemplation of the Prince lying on the ground before her. What she was thinking, Aragorn could not have guessed, but she seemed hard at work in trying to figure out something about Legolas, his rhaw, or his faer. Or perhaps she thought of the Silvan Prince not at all, though from how she studied the laegel it didn’t seem likely to Estel.

 _I hope you are trying to talk sense into Elise, Greenleaf,_ he spoke in his head as if Legolas might hear him. _If not, then please return to me. I do not ever want to lose you, but if this is your last night on Arda, as it is likely mine, as well, then I would still spend it with you. Even if I cannot see you. Even if we cannot talk to one another. Come back to me._

He paused in his pacing when a violent shudder ran up his calves, the backs of his thighs, and over his lower back, causing his muscles to ripple and seize in discomfort and nearly causing him to fall to the ground. He found his teeth chattering and gritted them in a concerted effort to remain upright, while quelling the urge to let the quaking of his lower half subsume the rest of his tired body. If he fell or could not stop the shivering, the twins would whisk him away to elsewhere to tend him, and thus, Aragorn would not be where last Legolas knew the man to be. He would not risk it. If Legolas returned looking for Estel, Estel would not force his lover to hunt for him.

“You really ought to be by a fire,” Kalin told the Ranger, but did not press the issue beyond this simple suggestion, for Kalin knew why Aragorn would do no such thing. To build a fire here would mean Legolas’ disembodied spirit could not come near, and above all else, Estel wanted for his lover to be beside him. So instead, Kalin gave the Ranger an understanding, beholden smile, for Kalin wanted just as much for his Prince to return to the area and needed Estel there to say it was so, since the elder Wood-Elf could not sense the younger Wood-Elf as could the human. “Will you not come sit? We can share our warmth with you,” he offered Aragorn. “I can find a blanket.”

The Adan shook his head but gave Kalin a thankful, ephemeral smile for his offer. Were he not filled with nervous energy, Aragorn would have otherwise accepted and crawled between Liandra and Kalin. The healer was comfortable enough with them to be offering physical comfort to the Elves and Rangers, whom she barely knew, so would likely not be bothered to huddle up next to the freezing Aragorn. He prevaricated a bit, saying as he turned on heel to begin his circuitous route anew, “I must move. I cannot sit still.”

“You need to rest. You need to…” the elderly woman cautioned Aragorn with the familiar tone of a healer expecting for her patient to obey, though she left off before finishing her second suggestion to ask, “So you feel as though Elise’s imprecation is still upon you?”

Liandra’s gaze did not leave Legolas as she asked Aragorn this; at least, not until Aragorn hunkered down next to Legolas’ fair head. Every few sweeps of the area with his feet and gaze, Estel would stop and do this so he could touch the Prince for a moment ere he began his useless pacing again. This time, Aragorn trailed his calloused fingertips along the abnormally relaxed flesh of his lover’s temples. Unblemished and a perfect, even shade of opal, Legolas’ skin was so pale and thinned by his rhaw’s failing that it was nacreous in the scant moonlight – save for the perfect sweeps of his dark amber eyebrows. He trailed a single finger over each brow. It suddenly occurred to him, _I have touched Legolas’ brow for the last time. I have kissed his lips for the last time. This may be his body, but without him in it, it is not Greenleaf. He is gone. I can never hold him again. I can never whisper how much I love him in his ear. I can never lie behind him and feel his lithe body aligned so perfectly with my own. I will never see his secretive smile, the one he shares only with me, nor hear his surprised, euphonious laughter when I give him some silly compliment. He is gone._ A new kind of shuddering overtook the Adan, one not caused by Elise’s curse, but by the sorrow of knowing his brief, tumultuous, but beautiful time with his Greenleaf was ended. Sour tears burnt his vision away. He pulled his hand back quickly, suddenly feeling as though he were handling a corpse. _Greenleaf is gone._

When the man let loose an exhale bordering upon a sob, it drew everyone save Reana’s attention to him, with the twins nearly leaping up to come to their brother at the sound, but they stopped from doing so when Liandra spoke, saying simply, soothingly, “Aragorn?”

Finally, he answered the healer’s question. "Yes, Elise will have my soul to add to her collection,” he rejoindered in unhidden hatred of the little girl child. Regardless of how his Greenleaf seemed to think the child was not evil, regardless of how her uncle sat there listening to all this with his own fond memories of the little girl Elise had once been, and regardless of how his anger served no purpose except to exacerbate his helplessness in all this, Aragorn continued, “I wish she had just killed me by the creek the first night. Perhaps Greenleaf would still be well, if she had.”

“Young one, never should a person wish for death so lightly,” the healer reprimanded without heat. Lifting her head from Kalin’s shoulder, removing her arms from where she held Kalin and Jakob’s limbs against her breast, and reaching out to Legolas, Liandra fiddled idly with the cloak covering the Prince’s body. When she had it covering the Silvan better than before, she sat back, took hold of Kalin’s hand this time, and commented, “If it is as you say, and Legolas has become a haunt like Elise, then if you die, you may do the same, assuming it is not dawn before then. Maybe you can find some comfort in this knowledge: upon your death, you may have the chance to speak to your friend before the sun rises, and you are both scattered to the winds by the light.”

As much as they all liked Liandra, Elladan and Elrohir stopped pretending to watch the activity in the barnyard, turned in their seats on the grass, and glowered at the woman, while everyone else looked at the woman as though she had grown a second head. Her morbid condolences were not given thoughtlessly, and in fact, cheered up the Ranger somewhat. _She is right. If I die before sunrise, then I may be able to find and speak to Greenleaf one last time. At least I can tell him how much I love him and say goodbye._ This caused the Adan to smile genuinely at first Liandra and then Legolas, while some of the nervous energy he felt dissipated. He did not wish for death, but if it were to come, and it seemed likely it would, then there was a silver lining to the proverbial cloud overshadowing his end.

Seeing how Liandra’s saturnine words had calmed their brother, Elladan and Elrohir forsook their irritation at the Adan woman and returned to keeping watch with Reana. The menfolk had run out of things to burn, it seemed; this did not deter them from their revelries, however. He could not hear what Randric was telling his kith, but from how the group of men constantly looked over to where the Elves, Rangers, and two of their own – Liandra and Wendt – sat near Legolas, Estel felt certain there would be bloodshed ere the sun rose. He felt better after speaking to the elderly healer, but try as Estel did to remain calm, he could not stop his pacing lest he lose his mind from inactivity. And so, the man stood and resumed his path amongst the grasses. Truth be told, he almost wished the men would rouse his anger so he could take out his aggression and helplessness upon someone, but he also realized the menfolk were not deserving of death without their offering harm first to his Rangers or the Eldar, and until they did, Aragorn could not kill to appease his fretfulness.

 _But it is only a matter of time,_ he told himself. _They will soon seek to burn what they deem they must, and whether Greenleaf’s body lives or not, they will not have him for their fire,_ he vowed, his hand finding the hilt of his sword at the imagining of thrusting its sharp and thirsty blade into any man who tried to touch Legolas with the intent of incinerating the Silvan like a piece of rubbish.

Prior to the decline of Legolas’ presence a short while ago, Estel had felt Legolas’ spirit – separate from the Elf’s body – with an acuity bordering on mania. When Legolas’ faer had still resided in his rhaw, this perception had seemed natural in the sense that the Ranger had not considered it abnormal to have a mindfulness of his Elven lover’s wellness and nearness. Often enough before, Aragorn had experienced the premonitory knowledge of Legolas being in danger or caught in grief, such that several times, Estel had been able to find and be of help to the Prince before the Wood-Elf succumbed to injury or sorrow. The anxiety he had felt in Thranduil’s halls when Legolas had lain in his bath, bleeding out from having hacked his thigh to pieces, was one such occurrence, for if Aragorn had not hurried to find Legolas that night because of this premonition of the Silvan being in peril, then Legolas might very well have exsanguinated ere being found. In other, less dangerous instances – especially when first the Elf had come to Imladris after fleeing Mirkwood – Aragorn had felt Legolas’ whelming grief and had been able to appease the Prince’s sorrow before it could pull the Elf under entirely. But now, Kalin said Legolas’ soul was gone from his body, and still, Aragorn could perceive the Silvan’s presence even though Legolas’ faer was separate from his rhaw. He would not have believed it possible prior to today. The strangeness of this barely registered to Aragorn, however, for more concerning right now was how he could not feel Legolas any longer.

One moment, the Elf’s presence had been diminishing but there all the same, and the next, Estel had felt nothing. Myriad reasons for this ran through his mind, each one more disastrous than the one coming before. _Maybe he has gone to find Elise. Maybe his faer only just left his body, and Kalin was wrong about it happening before now. Maybe,_ he considered, _I have only felt Legolas’ presence because of how he shared his faer’s vitality with me, and now that it has waned and I am returned to normal, the connection between us is lost. Or, maybe Legolas is gone. Maybe he got too close to the fire or some other light, and his faer burnt away like fog in the morning sunshine._

The Ranger was once more overcome with the dolesome realization of Legolas’ death. Throughout the last half year, and several times before, Estel had felt keenly the fear of losing Legolas. Each time, he had held onto hope. When caught in the grasp of the merchants on the trade route outside Lake-town, Aragorn had been terrified for his Silvan friend but had denied the prospect of the Elf dying from injury or sorrow. When the Silvan had fled Imladris to seek out Mithfindl for revenge, Aragorn had refused to believe Legolas might succumb to grief and die, or be found by Mithfindl, tormented, and killed. All these events had left the man plagued with nightmares – terrifying dreams concocted by his harried mind where he watched helplessly as Legolas was tortured, abused, and killed, and through which he relived all the remembrances of the horrific moments of his nearly losing the Wood-Elf to injury or grief.

He lived his nightmare now. And he was just as helpless to stop it.

Cutting across his circle of trampled grass, the man stumbled to his lover’s uninjured side, fell to his knees, and began to gather the Silvan into his arms, heedless of the Elf’s broken ribs. It was some relief to find Legolas breathed still, at least. Kalin hurried out of Liandra’s hold of him and to the other side of his Prince, where he crouched down beside Aragorn, appearing very much as if he might admonish the Adan for how he was treating his Prince, given that Legolas’ body was injured. Yet, he did not argue, but asked, “What’s wrong? Estel, what is it?”

 _I gave Kalin hope by telling him his Prince’s soul lived on, now I must tell him Legolas is gone. I cannot feel his faer. He must be gone now._ Desperately, the Ranger inhaled the scent of the Elf, trying to capture the aroma of pine and bergamot of which the Prince always smelled, but at the moment, there was only the stench of the fire’s smoke. He tried to revel in the familiar feeling of warmth from the Elf’s skin, but Legolas’ flesh was unnaturally cool to the touch. It was as if he held a facsimile of his Greenleaf but not Legolas himself.

The man was not distraught or weeping, but numb from grief. Until this moment, he had retained faith that the Wood-Elf would live, that Legolas would somehow return his faer to rhaw and wake up with a smile for Estel. So unreal did it now seem for Estel to believe the Prince was no longer capable of this that the Ranger was shocked into silence and could not find the words to answer Kalin. The sentry began to repeat his question, or perhaps to ask something else, when a deafening crash startled both Kalin and Estel, and the others sitting a short distance away. In the barnyard, men were screaming in surprise and worry – one whole side of the house had finally collapsed outward and the floor beneath it collapsed into the cellar, and in doing so, it showered the yard with embers and debris – especially bits of flaming vegetative matter from the remnants of the thatch roof – which were scattering the menfolk as they tried to avoid being burnt.

“Maybe they will be pacified now,” Elladan commented in disbelief of his own statement. Their attention having been upon the chaos in the barnyard, the twins turned to look at the others behind them, to find Estel with Legolas in his arms, and a frazzled Kalin beside him.

Both identical brothers climbed to their feet and came to Aragorn, settling down in front of him and placing their hands upon the Prince to check for life in his rhaw. Estel imagined he must look a fright to them, for unchecked tears streamed down his face and he was holding onto his Greenleaf’s slight body with all his might.

Elrohir was the first to try to pry the Prince away from Aragorn, telling the human, “Brother, his ribs are broken. You will only worsen them.”

“If he is dead, as you say, then there is no point, is there?” he asked the twins somewhat vindictively, while wishing they would dispute this claim, and knowing they would not.

As expected, the twins did not argue against him, but still, Elladan forcefully pried Aragorn’s hand away from Legolas’ upper shoulders while Elrohir did the same with Aragorn’s hand upon the Wood-Elf’s waist. The elder twin tried, “If you wish to hold him, lie beside him. Do not cause his rhaw pain, please.”

This argument worked, at least, and Aragorn allowed the Prince to be pulled away and settled back on the ground. At once, he stretched out to lie beside the Silvan as suggested, and laid his head against the side of his lover’s chest, burying his nose into the cloak lain over the Elf’s body. Almost immediately, the feeling of lying next to a corpse came to him, and the Ranger sat up in a hurry. He wished he could take comfort from the laegel’s rhaw, but it was Legolas’ faer for which he longed. So instead, he sat upon his arse, drew his knees up to his chest, and rested his head upon them, before he covered his head with his arms.

He heard Halbarad and Elladan talking to Liandra soon after, and then there was silence until Kalin once more asked the Ranger, “What is it, Estel? What happened?”

Aragorn lifted his arms, laid his cheek on his knee so he could face the sentry, and admitted, “I do not want to lose him. But there is nothing I can do to stop it. I do not even care if I die this night, as well. In fact, I would rather it be so, if it means I could speak to Greenleaf one last time.”

Having not moved from where he had come to crouch by the Ranger, Kalin’s morose face showed he clearly commiserated with how Aragorn felt. The sentry nodded once, settled back onto his haunches, and then sighed. All day, Kalin had been preparing himself for his Prince’s death while Aragorn had refuted it. The sentry had cried, argued, and finally accepted it was happening, but of course, Kalin had been given the chance to say goodbye to his beloved charge. Then, Estel had given the Elf hope, and although Estel had never explicitly said he believed Legolas’ faer might return to his rhaw, it had been upon both the Ranger and sentry’s mind to wish for it to happen. And now, when Aragorn lost all hope for this to happen, since he could no longer feel the Elf’s faer near, it was Kalin who offered Estel hope. But he did not do so by saying a word; rather, he grabbed his Prince’s arm in hand and offered it to the Ranger, who took it out of habit. He merely held Legolas’ hand in his own as if it were a cup or stick, and not the limb of his cherished Greenleaf. After a moment of staring at Aragorn in expectation, Kalin turned his Prince’s hand over so his palm was up, and brought it to a confused but passive Estel’s face, ere he pressed the inside of Legolas’ wrist to Aragorn’s mouth. Beneath his lips, he could feel the Prince’s heartbeat. It soothed the Ranger. No longer feeling as if he were holding the hand of his lover’s corpse, Aragorn did not need for Kalin to press Legolas’ hand against his mouth any longer, for Estel did it for himself, and rejoiced in the sensation. A new wave of hope began to crest inside his heart, though he tried to quell it.

Finally, Kalin spoke. “Do you know what Legolas told Thranduil the night he left Eryn Galen to come to Imladris, to be with you?” Aragorn shook his head that he didn’t. “He told Thranduil he would come back to him, if he could. He said, ‘I will always come back to you if I can.’”

The Ranger startled to hear this, for Legolas had said it to him the night before, and thought, _Greenleaf told me the same when he and Jakob left to search for Elise – that he would come back to me if he could._

Kalin said no more on the matter, but the Wood-Elf didn’t need to, for he had said enough. If Legolas could, he would return to them. And even if he couldn’t, Estel would still know his lover had done everything possible to protect him, the others, and even the villagers who had likely turned against them.

They sat in silence for some time, with none of the others speaking, either. It wasn’t until Elladan mentioned something about Halbarad returning when the Ranger realized the older Adan had left their group. He lowered Legolas’ hand from his mouth but pressed it to his chest, instead, where he could feel the Elf’s heartbeat against his own, and looked to see what was happening. To Estel’s surprise, from the group of villagers walked Liandra with Halbarad. He had not been aware she had gone back to her kith, as for the last half hour or so, the whole of his attention had been upon Legolas – both in the search for some sign of his presence and the feeling of his living body against his own. While the Elves and Rangers watched her approach, Randric and his riled menfolk watched her leave, making Estel wonder what foul news she would bring to them now.

Liandra steered Halbarad, who once more offered the aged Adan aid in traversing the rough field, so they both stood before Wendt. The healer was elderly, but at that moment, she looked far beyond her years – ancient, even. She released Halbarad’s arm and took Wendt’s hand, instead, her small, feminine hand lost in the blacksmith’s larger, calloused one. Kalin and Estel remained sitting beside Legolas, but both listened along with the others when Liandra explained, “They aren’t satisfied, dear. They demand they be allowed to burn the bodies.”

Before Wendt could respond, Halbarad instructed Jakob, “Go to Tomas. Help him get all the horses ready. If the villagers become violent, we will need to leave quickly. I would rather not have to cut them all down just to get out of here alive.”

 _They are caught in the ecstasy of rage,_ he knew of the menfolk in the barnyard, all of whom were now waiting for Liandra’s task to be completed. Estel was unsurprised to find many of the villagers were picking up the discarded torches not used to set the house and barn afire, ready to light them for either weapons or to set fire to the bodies, while others were in the untended garden next to the smoking husk of the decimated barn, where they pulled from the weeds two pitchforks, a shovel, and a hoe. Their intention to fight for the chance to finish their infuriated undertaking was clear.

Wendt shook his head at Liandra but watched with everyone else as Jakob sprinted off towards the coppice to do as instructed. When the Ranger was out of sight, he shook his head again and said, “They promised I could bury them. You have to make them understand, Liandra. I need to bury them in the dirt they tilled.”

“I know, dear, but Randric has them all convinced Elise’s ghost won’t be destroyed until her body is burnt, and the others are to be burnt along with her as assurance. In fact, he’s told them that if burning your family’s bodies doesn’t work, they need to dig up those already dead by her hand and burn them, as well,” the healer told the blacksmith, not liking to be the bearer of this news, but not shirking the responsibility in trying to keep the peace between the two groups of people.

 _It may be just as well for us to allow them to burn the bodies,_ Estel considered but did not say aloud. He did not want to join the argument but would join the fight if it came to it.

Elrohir was not as hesitant to make his opinion known. He joined his twin and the healer in standing before Wendt. “Listen: I know it is difficult, but if you allow your kith to burn your kin, they might well be appeased. Their rage may cease.”

“And who knows? If Elise lingers still, then burning her body might sever her tether to the physical world,” Elladan added, agreeing with his twin and trying to convince Wendt by offering, “If you decide not to allow them, we will stand with you to sway them otherwise, but know this – there may be violence.”

Aragorn whispered only loud enough for Kalin to hear, “They are wrong. The men will not stop at burning the corpses. They will seek to make corpses next.”

Kalin did not answer verbally, but he nodded at Aragorn, agreeing with the Ranger’s opinion. While neither said it, they were both thinking of Legolas, for Estel had an inkling that if Randric desired to burn all those whom were touched by Elise, it was only a matter of time before he decided Legolas needed to be destroyed, as well. Kalin worried much the same, although he also feared for Estel’s welfare should the men learn Estel was affected by Elise’s curse.

“Even outnumbered as we are,” Halbarad inserted his own opinion, shifting from foot to foot in agitation of having this decision on the hands of a blacksmith whom they had known for less than a day and not in the Rangers or Elves’ hands, “we could defeat the villagers. They are unarmed or barely armed, and not as well trained as are we. One of us might be injured or killed in the process, and while I am oathed to die for any righteous cause, it seems a shame to kill living men to protect the bodies of dead men. These people from your village are surely good people, and acting out of fear and rage, but not evilness.”

With the hand Liandra did not hold, Wendt rubbed at his forehead in indecision. Clearly, he did not want for his family’s bodies to be burnt, but he also did not want for his fellow villagers to be killed, nor for any of the Rangers or Elves to die for the cause. He looked over to where his sister and her family were lined up in the grass off to the side from where they were gathered, then down to the ground, unable to meet anyone’s gaze. He asked of Liandra and everyone else, “Can we try to talk sense into them first? I will let them burn the bodies if they cannot be persuaded. I don’t want anyone else to be hurt by all this.”

Palpable relief fell over Aragorn, Kalin, the Noldor, and Halbarad, while Liandra patted Wendt’s hand in comfort. “I will try but – ”

“We will try,” Elladan interrupted, taking the woman’s arm in hand so he could help her back to her kith. Elrohir came to stand on her other side and took her other arm, adding, “Let us hurry and do so.”

They left Wendt standing there, where Estel felt he would no doubt watch everything happening but not be involved, lest the blacksmith lose his temper or his composure and incite violence amongst his kith. Not to be left behind when her twin Lords were walking towards danger, Reana followed behind Elladan and Elrohir, which left Halbarad to keep watch for threats while Kalin and Aragorn kept their vigil over Legolas’ body. Absently, Estel slithered one hand to his lower back and began to rub the algid area thereon, which was growing in size and coolness.

_Will they let the villagers burn my body after I am dead? I would rather they do than fight the villagers to stop it from happening._

At this point, with Legolas’ presence now absent and his own life petering away, Estel felt certain he would die before dawn. As he gathered his Elven lover’s lifeless hand more closely to his own shivering chest, Aragorn felt it did not matter if he died now, since Legolas was gone; he could only pray that his brothers, Rangers, Kalin, and Reana made it out of this situation unscathed, and if Eru truly had any mercy, Estel would get to speak to his Greenleaf once last time.


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three chapters in about a week? Good gracious, I'm on a roll. Too bad it's about to roll me right into writer's block. Enjoy.

One moment he had been at the farm, now he was at the lake, and with no time lapse between. Legolas stood in amazement, looking around him as though the water, trees, bank, and moon overhead might disappear as quickly as they had appeared. _How on Arda did she do this?_ he wondered, but since he had seen stranger things this night, he didn’t give it much more thought.

The Adan girl let go of the Elf’s hand; she sat down on the bank ere she looked up at him and grinned her innocent grin, then held her hand out to him in a beckoning gesture, inciting him into joining her. Legolas did so, lowering himself into sitting on the shore beside the girl. Everything looked just as it had a few days ago when he and Estel had left the lake. At the old oak, the one where Aragorn had taken to sitting and thus claimed as his “chair,” there was still a slight indent upon the grass and leaves from where the Ranger’s rear had flattened them. Although they had taken care not to leave behind anything and to return their campsite as much as feasible to its formerly pristine state, the ring of stones they had placed around their fire pit, along with the ashes and scorched ground from the flames, still sat where they had left them. In fact, despite it having been a couple of days ago and though Legolas knew it was just his imagination since he could smell nothing else in this ephemeral state, he could have sworn there still hung in the air the faint scent of mint from his and Estel’s loving play just ere they had left the area.

“That’s the best place for berries, over that way,” Elise was telling the Wood-Elf as she pointed across the small lake to where the trees were younger and more underbrush grew about them. Having been alone and unable to speak with anyone for so long, Elise was making good use of her chance to speak to Legolas now, and chattered away incessantly. Legolas was having a hard time paying attention, what with so much upon his mind and the newness of his current situation. Nearly whispering, as one would when telling a secret, Elise admitted with a grin, “Mum used to make cobbler out of the blackberries, but I would just eat them off the briar. They’re better that way.”

The Silvan Prince looked out over the water, whereon the moonlight reflected in rippled, hoary waves as the fish underneath swam beyond his ability to view. Legolas remembered clearly the calm water’s sweet taste, the sensation of the chilly breeze upon his flesh as it blew over the surface of the lake, and the fragrant smell of the freshwater, trees, and vegetation in the area, but as he existed now, he could not feel or taste any of it. Experimentally, Legolas stretched his legs out, allowing what looked like his feet to dangle in the lake’s water. Doing so caused nary a ripple in the water’s surface. Being that his boots and trousers were not real, neither became soaked by the liquid, and likewise, being that his legs and feet were not real, he could not feel the cool lake against his skin. It disturbed him greatly. To die was one thing, to exist without the simple pleasures of living seemed an entirely worse condition. In vain, he lowered a hand to the lake and tried to feel the water upon his skin; of course, just like his feet and legs, he felt nothing.

_How has she withstood remaining like this? It is no wonder she has been so lonely and bereft, if she could not even take diversion in the meagerness of existence itself._

If Elise noted Legolas’ lack of attention, it did not keep her from talking about berries, cobbler, and her mother, and while the Elf caught every couple of words, he could not truly make sense of what she was telling him, for he was too caught up in trying to make sense of himself. Several feet to their left, two does stood at the bank, their elegant necks bowed to drink from the water; neither noticed Elise and Legolas sitting there nearby, as expected, and so the girl and Elf watched them with Elise now blathering on about something else Legolas found hard to understand, for she spoke of some game she used to play in school with which he was unfamiliar, and it had something to do with the berries of which she had been speaking. She reached out and took his hand, causing him to try harder to give her his regard, to listen. By this touch, Elise seemed to be seeking the comfort of knowing he was there beside her and would not be leaving. While he could not feel the lake or the grass under him, he had some sensation of her hand in his, and this soothed him somewhat.

“My Mum and Da used to bring me here, with Granpa Emler,” the haunt told the Prince.

He squeezed her hand gently in response to the sadness in her tone. She was swinging her legs in the lake, and to the Elf’s amazement, the water swished around her feet – not as it ought to have, but that it did at all was a feat, in his thinking. It brought to mind how she had moved the dolls in her house, and he wondered, _How long did it take her to learn to do that? How long would it take me to learn it?_ Such a thing might come in handy if he had the need to be of aid to Estel and the others against the villagers.

She rambled on, telling the Elf, “We would fish and swim. I loved it here. I still do. When Galeb was born, Mum and Da stopped coming because Galeb was too little for it, but they said we’d come back when he got older. He didn’t get the chance to get older, and we didn’t get the chance to come back,” she explained, sounding much older than she was, much wiser and worldly than she ought to have sounded.

“It is a very beautiful lake. Estel and I enjoyed staying here,” he replied. Elise already knew of the time Legolas and Aragorn had camped beside the lake, for she had watched them do so without their knowledge. “Estel didn’t want to leave, but I made him,” he admitted to the girl, wishing with all his heart he had not left with Estel that day, but stayed here forever. Doing so might have kept the Adan from being touched by Elise and thereby safe, but even if it hadn’t, Legolas would have had more days or weeks’ worth of memories with his Adan lover. “I made him leave because I thought someone was watching us. And it turned out someone was. You.”

She laughed and glanced at him with shy shame, like a child caught peeking upon something she shouldn’t have seen; in fact, this was the case, for Elise had seen Estel and Legolas doing things to each other and together that no child should have seen at her tender age. She laughed again and kicked her feet hard, which resulted in a mild splash of the lake’s water and made the two does look up, their short tails flitting in agitation at the unknown source of disturbance.

Elise told the Elf, “I didn’t mean to scare you off. I was just watching you have fun. I was lonely,” she said. “If I had been alive, we could have fished and swam together. You wouldn’t have left if I had been alive and there, would you?” she asked in what Legolas supposed to be fretfulness of her new friend not liking her.

_Was. She_ was _lonely, but now she is not, because she has me for eternity,_ he noticed of what she had said, and not without some rancor. Aloud, though, he told the child, “If you had been here alone, we would have tried to take you back to your family. If you and your family had been here, we would have shared a meal, perhaps, and I could have taught you how to skip stones across the lake.”

This pleased Elise to no end, for she grinned a smile wide enough to show every tooth she was missing from having lost them to make room for her adult teeth; and it pleased Legolas to have pleased her. Legolas had a tender heart for the very old, the very young, and for all the animals of Eru’s creation, and treated them all fairly, kindly, and respectfully. The similarities between Elise and Estel when younger made this desire to be benevolent all the more keen to the Wood-Elf, who found himself wanting to make her smile and laugh as he had once strove to do the same for a juvenile Estel.

“I miss my Mum and Da, and even Galeb, although he was fussy and he smelled awful when he messed himself,” she confided to Legolas, beaming through the tears gathering in her bright emerald eyes. The girl suddenly became very serious, her smile fading and her tears beginning to fall down her plump cheeks as she pled for the Elf to believe her, “I didn’t mean to kill them. I promise I didn’t. I didn’t even know I was dead. I was just looking at my treasure when I got a splinter. I went home to get Da or Mum to get it out of my finger. I was crying and yelling, but they didn’t come running, and I thought they were mad because I went to the creek when Da said I wasn’t allowed to go by myself. I went into the house and tried to hug Mum to try to make her pay attention to me. Mum wouldn’t even look at me. She wouldn’t answer me, and when I hugged her, she fell over. Then Da came in as I was running out to find him to tell him about Mum, and when I grabbed his arm to pull him to Mum to help her, he fell over, too, and dropped wood all over Mum’s clean floor,” she explained in desperate desire for Legolas to understand.

Elise tugged on the Prince’s fingers one by one, playing with his fingernails, and looking at them as if they were the most interesting things she had ever seen, though in truth, Legolas imagined she felt too ashamed to look him in the eye. His heart went out to the little girl. Despite her having killed nearly half the small settlement in which she had lived, she was a child still, in his thinking, and although the curse upon her might be evil, he once again thought as he had before in deciding Elise was not evil in herself – or at least, not at first. Why she had killed half her kith, he had yet to hear, but imagined he would soon learn, for now she had someone to talk to, Elise would likely tell him everything about everything, whether he wanted to listen or not.

When Legolas only waited patiently for her to continue, Elise went on, saying to him in a voice growing softer as her story became harder for her to tell, “I got scared. I was crying and yelling for Da to wake up. Then Galeb started crying because I was crying, so I went to get him. I guess he got scared, too. And he could see me. He looked right at me and smiled, but when I went to pick him up, he went still just like Mum and Da. His eyes were open, like he was looking at me, but he didn’t cry and he didn’t move. Then I was really scared. I didn’t know what I’d done. I ran out to the barn to find Granpa, and he acted like he couldn’t hear me, either. I grabbed his arm to make him listen, to make him come help Mum and Da, and he fell over just like they did.”

This part of her tale told, Elise sat silently for a moment, her weeping freshening, until it became all out sobs which shook her thin frame. Legolas could not bear listening to her without trying to pacify the child. He reached beside him and gathered the girl into his arms, settling her into sitting crossways over his lap, while hugging her to his ephemeral chest. She rested her head just above where his heart should have beat, doing this with all the innocent trust of a child as young as she was when she died, and bawled her grief not just to have seen her family’s deaths, but also to know she was the cause of them.

“I am sorry, tithen pen,” he told her and stroked her long, tangled blond hair while holding her tight. He wanted to tell the little girl it would be alright, but he could not lie to her, for clearly, nothing had been alright for her since the splinter was embedded in her finger, and more than likely, nothing would ever be alright for her again. “I am sorry you have lost your family, melui henig. I am sure they loved you very much and are not angry with you for what you have done to them. You did not know, as you say.”

“I hope they aren’t angry. Mum and Da will switch me if I ever get to see them again, but Grandpa will just swing me around and be happy.” She sniveled a time or two more before asking him in curiosity, “What does that mean? Teethin pin? Mellowy hen egg?” she mispronounced, attempting to replicate his Sindarin epithets.

He smiled down into her blonde hair, trying not to laugh at her horrible imitation, and explained, “Tithen pen means little one, and melui henig means sweet child. Just words of endearment for you, Elise. And I think you will see your family again one day, in the afterlife, if Ilúvatar wills it.”

_And soon,_ he added to himself. _I hope you get to see them very soon,_ he wished, for if such a thing were to happen, it meant his own faer was released and free to flee to the Halls of Awaiting, and perhaps if it happened soon enough, Estel’s safety could be assured.

She nodded, reached up to wipe the tears from her cheeks, and then laid her head back upon his chest, hugging his waist and fiddling with the back of his tunic. “Will you teach me how to speak Elvish?”

If he were to be her friend until Eru unmade Arda, then he would have all the time in the world to do so. If one or both of them were released from this confinement ere the end of all things, Legolas still thought it was not a cruel lie for him to promise, “I shall, if you like.”

Again, she nodded and now took up a stray strand of the Elf’s hair, which she began twiddling around her fingers. Elise looked just as she did when she died – right down to the dirt under her nails and upon her bare legs and feet; likewise, Legolas looked just as he had when he died, with his hair in the loose braid Kalin had made of it to keep it out of the grass, and his chest was bound with the linen used to try to wrap his broken ribs. Elise played idly with the end of his braid. After her exuberance to chatter earlier, her silence now seemed harsh and unwelcome to Legolas. He considered not asking her the question on his mind, for he did not want to upset her further, but his interest bested him.

He found himself asking in hopes she would reveal what had caused her to begin taking the lives of the villagers, the knowledge of which he desired to keep her from doing so ever again, “What did you do next? After your mother, father, brother, and grandfather were dead?”

She had tied the end of Legolas’ hair in a knot and now tried to unknot it, and once again did not look at him while she spoke. “I stayed on the farm for a while. I don’t know how long. The days are weird,” she explained. Legolas could already sense the truth in this statement, for he could see how time meant little in this state. “I thought Uncle Wendt might come out, but he never showed up. We didn’t go into town much and Uncle Wendt only ever came out for holidays or to help with the harvest, but I kept wishing he would. I never got hungry or thirsty, and never felt tired, so I got bored. And it was scary being all by myself. The horses and cows and goats and chickens were blaring for water and food, but I couldn’t pick anything up to feed them, and it got so loud and made me so sad. ”

From what the blacksmith had told them that morning, Wendt had meant to go out to the farm to check on his sister and her family, but he had been busy at his forge and because Jenafer and Galeb had been reclusive, he had not been terribly concerned enough to take the time to do it. But then, had he done so, Wendt would likely be dead, having been touched and killed by Elise weeks ago.

“Mum told me never to go to the village by myself, but I was so lonely,” she told the Elf, sounding very much as if she thought he might fuss at her for doing it. The human child gave up on picking out the knot she’d made in Legolas’ hair and instead began fiddling with the front of the Prince’s tunic as she spoke. “I went to the neighbors first. And none of them saw me, either. No one would speak to me. Everyone I touched died. I thought it was a nightmare. I thought I might wake up.”

He could see how she might think so. And being so young, Elise could not be blamed for not having enough experience or the intelligence to suss out what had happened to her. But what interested Legolas most was what had happened when Elise _had_ figured out what was transpiring, and why she had kept touching people when knowing it killed them.

“I ran towards the village to get help. I used to go to school during the winter, when all the crops were up, and I always liked my teacher, so I went to find her. It was nighttime by the time I got to the village and I thought she would yell at me for being out alone after dark, but she didn’t see me either, and didn’t hear me when I talked to her. When I touched her and she fell over, it wasn’t like the other times. The other times, when it was light out, everyone just fell over and died, but when I touched teacher, she fell over, but there was two of her, and the one not on the ground was looking at me like I was a ghost.

“She cried and cried. Then she sat and talked to me for a while. She told me what she thought was going on, that I was dead, and she was dead, and somehow I wasn’t moving on to where I was supposed to go,” she told the Elf. Elise began unbuttoning and buttoning one of the fastenings on Legolas’ tunic. This in itself was odd, since the tunic did not technically exist, but the Prince was more focused upon her story, for Elise was telling him what he most wanted to know. “I told her I was sorry and she forgave me. When the sun came up, she disappeared. The dawn took her away and I was alone again. But she looked happy when the sun came up, like she wanted to go, and that made me even sadder.”

Legolas threaded his fingers through the girl’s hair from scalp to the every ends of it, combing out the tangles in absentminded affection, while he thought on what she told him. Finally, he thought she might be waiting for him to say something, and so he again tried to soothe her, telling Elise, “She forgave you, melui henig. She could have been angry with you. And although it made you sad to see her go, she needed to move on, as you should have moved on, as well.”

While he hadn’t exactly meant to criticize the girl’s actions – at least, not just yet – she took them as condemnation. Showing her age and immaturity, she told him, “She could have stayed with me. I was all alone!”

“Yes, but when the sun came out, she had no choice, I should think. Did you not realize the sun cast her soul to the afterlife?” he asked, praying that it had not been mere selfishness to have caused the little girl to take life after life in her desire to have a friend. “Did you think she left you for meanness?”

Elise pouted a moment, tugged on Legolas’ braid a bit too hard, though it didn’t hurt in the least, and then shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I didn’t know the sun would do that. I didn’t realize it until later. After she left, I went back home and stayed for a while, but Mum and Da and Granpa started to look funny, and I didn’t want to see them like that. I came to the lake because it’s always pretty out here, and after a while, I saw you and your friend Estel arrive.” Finally, the girl quit her fidgeting and scooted away from Legolas’ chest and out of his arms, though she stayed sitting on his lap, while her sadness overwhelmed the happiness she felt to have found a friend that day. “You and him remind me of Mum and Da. They were always playing around and joking and laughing, and kissing and hugging like you two do. Watching you made me feel less alone,” she told the Prince, reaching up and patting his face with a genuine smile. She studied the Wood-Elf’s features for a minute before telling him, “You look like my Mum. She was blonde and nice, and always smiling and very, very pretty, just like you.”

He couldn’t help but to laugh at her compliment. Estel told Legolas often enough how beautiful he was, but he couldn’t ever recall being called pretty by anyone not giving him a hard time. “Thank you, Elise. You are very pretty, as well. You must look just like your mother.”

She beamed in pleasure to be compared to her mother, ran a hand down Legolas’ face again, and commented, “You don’t have any whiskers, like Da, but Estel does. And Estel’s hair is dark and he’s quiet and clever like Da. Having you two here was like having Mum and Da here with me, and it made me happy. And then, you saw me in the forest. You really saw me, and could tell I was there, and I just knew we could be friends. No one had ever seen me before except Galeb – not until after I learnt not to touch them until after dark, so they were ghosts like me, anyway. And after I touched them, most of them were too sad to want to play or talk, or they were mad at me for what I had done,” she rambled on, giving him her hopeful, pleased smile, “but I knew you would be nice, just like my Mum. Estel kind of scared me though. He gets real mad really fast, like Granpa Emler used to do when he drank the shine he bought from the peddler who used to come to the village green. He also mad you sad a lot,” she told the Elf, which confused Legolas until he realized she was once again speaking of Estel and not the peddler or Emler, “but you were nice to me, and you could see me! I got so excited.”

The Wood-Elf admitted, “Yes, I did see, and it frightened me. I had never seen anyone who looked as you did that day. You were translucent and dark, and if Estel was mean to me when first I saw you, it was because he was afraid for me. He feared I was hallucinating,” he told her, and then thinking she might not know the meaning of the word, he further explicated, “Seeing things, I mean. He thought I was seeing something or someone who was not actually there. It worried him.”

“But why did he make you so sad?” she asked him in the youthful, innocent manner of someone who still thought all hurts could be solved by a simple apology.

Although unsure of exactly what incident of which she spoke, he moved the child to settle her with her bony rear closer to his knees, her back to him, and then took to braiding her hair for her in the manner of the Silvan warriors – all of which he did just to keep touching her to comfort the young one while he explained, “I love Estel like your mother loves your father, and he loves me like your father loves your mother. Do you understand what that means?” She nodded, and Legolas assumed she did know, since she had seen the Elf and Ranger kiss, embrace, and make love as married adults do, and likely, some of which she had seen her parents do when alive. Feeling out of his depth in explaining such a concept to a child, Legolas thought of how Elrond might clarify it, and so after a moment of thought, said, “Sometimes, those whom we love most hurt us the most, and it isn’t always on purpose or for meanness, but out of fear for the other’s well-being. Estel made me sad because he was afraid for me and I thought him to be treating me like a child.”

Sagely nodding her head as if she understood every word the Elf said, Elise seemed to agree with this justification. She let him braid her hair, her eyes closing and her smile of enjoyment faint while he played with her long tresses. Once done, she could have passed for a Silvan Elfling, had she the pointed ears to match, and in fact, when she reached her hand up to feel what he had done, she asked, “Do I look like you now? Or like you did earlier before the other Elf took your braids out?”

Having been unconscious when Elrohir unplaited his hair, Legolas could only assume she meant how he normally wore his hair, and so answered, “You do. You look like an Elfling, melui henig! You could be my sister.”

She laughed delightedly while feeling the plaits in her hair. At first, Legolas thought to encourage her to look at her reflection in the lake, ere it hit him that neither of their reflections would show in the still water by which they sat. Again, the enormity of his situation struck the Silvan Elf, and though he could spend eternity without ever seeing himself in a mirror, the reminder of his invisibleness brought a pang of agony to his ethereal chest.

“They burnt up my box of treasure,” she complained suddenly in childish petulance. Her lower lip stuck out some in a moue of displeasure, which endeared her to the Wood-Elf further. She folded her hands in her lap and twisted her bare toes into the lake’s embankment, the grass twitching at her movements. “I watched them do it. I’ve been watching them all day since you passed out by the porch, although they didn’t know I was there. They burnt up my box and it made a loud bang. It made Estel fall down, but he woke up a little later and said he was ok.”

Hearing that Estel had been knocked out by this was news to him, but he was glad to know the Ranger had not been hurt by it. Moreover, if they had burnt the box, then he could only presume, _They have already tried to incinerate everything they could find to release her from her incorporeal state, and thus me and Estel from this curse._ Legolas recalled what she had shown him earlier that day, when he was still alive and they were in the house. She had shown the Elf how a splinter from her box of treasures became stuck in her forefinger. Thinking of this now, the Prince wondered, _Wait a moment. They destroyed the box, but the splinter was what caused her to die, as though the wood held some ancient imprecation that both killed her and kept her from passing on to the Halls of Awaiting. Can it be removed? And if so, will it break the curse?_ A frisson of excitement ran through his incorporeal being at the possibility.

Legolas gently pulled her arm from out of her lap – remembering it to be the one on which her injured finger was attached – and held her hand in his own. He had told Kalin to warn the others about the box and the splinter, and they had destroyed the box, according to Elise, but they had not done so to the splinter. Of course, he had not been able to explain further that the splinter was in the girl’s finger, so could hardly blame them for it. The Silvan turned her tiny hand over and inspected her forefinger, while she watched on in inquisitiveness as to what he was doing. As he had seen earlier, a minute bead of blood hung from the broken skin of her finger, perpetually in free fall, it appeared, though it would never actually drop from the small wound, being that Elise – and Legolas – appeared as they did upon their deaths and would remain that way as haunts. Upon closer inspection, the Prince could not see the splinter stuck in the skin of her digit.  

_It must be deep within her flesh. Is it even possible for me to remove it here? Or could it only be done from her corpse’s skin?_

Before, she could only show him what had occurred through mental imagery, but now, Legolas could ask, and so inquired while he gently massaged her small hand in his own, “You died shortly after getting this splinter, didn’t you?”

She nodded, suddenly somber. The pale moonlight glinted in her green eyes, which were filled with tears yet again. He tired of seeing her sad this night, although he feared by the end of the night, she would be shedding more tears. Furthermore, if Legolas’ faer dissipated with the dawn, as he thought it would, then her sorrow had only just now begun, for she would be on her own once more. What she might do then, if he could not manage to release her soul to the afterlife, concerned him. Already, she had taken the lives of half of her village – alone again, she might take the rest of them. And what was to stop her from continuing on to the next settlement, or some larger place like Bree, into the Shire, or even Imladris?

“I promised to help you, tithen pen, and I want to send you onwards to the Halls of Awaiting, where you can be with your family again. To do so, I think we must remove and destroy the splinter in your body’s finger,” he explained to her with as much patience and kindness as he could muster, while trying to dampen his excitement to have the potential end to her stay on Arda set before him. 

“But I don’t want to leave now. You are here!” she countered. Elise pulled her hand out of the Elf’s hand quickly and hid it in the cloth of her dress lying over her lap. “You promised to stay with me. You said you would teach me how to speak Elvish,” the Adan haunt countered in disappointed resentment.

He had to make her understand. He had to make her see. If scaring her into this understanding were the only to convince her, then Legolas would do as he must. “So I did, but what happens come dawn, Elise? Or even if I make it past tonight’s end, there will always be the chance that some other light may send me on my way to the afterlife. You ought not to linger here alone – not when you can be with your kin, melui henig. There is no reason for you to be alone and suffering, not when you can be with your Mum, Da, brother, and Grandpa,” he tried to tell her. She was listening to him, but the Elf could see she was not convinced by this.

Elise quieted. She sat on Legolas’ lap, content just to be held, while the Prince stayed silent and let her stew upon what he had told her. Before, the Elf could feel her emotions and guess her thoughts, as they were connected in some strange way; it was no different now, and he could sense she was thinking about what he had told her. _Let her think on it,_ he told himself. _Maybe she will see the good reasoning behind helping me to help her move on; else, even if she doesn’t, I will find some way to tell Estel and the others of the splinter, and ensure it is destroyed._ She had told him Estel would be well. Soon, he would leave and return to the farm – how he would do this, he did not yet know – but he needed to ascertain whether Elise was telling him the truth about the curse upon the Ranger being lifted.

Having finally had their fill of water, the deer near them began ambling away from the lake without rush, as they sensed no peril. Any other night, at any other time, Legolas would have found peace in this. He could not enjoy any of it. He would never find peace again until he knew Estel was truly well. A consuming need to return to the farm incited the Wood-Elf to open his mouth a few times to speak, but breaking the silence just now did not seem best. The girl’s mind was awash with the confusion his words had brought her. He could all but hear Elise thinking about whether she wanted to move on to be with her family, or to stay here with him. To Legolas, the decision would have been easy, and if given the same choice, he would choose the Halls of Awaiting, where he could join his mother and ancestors, and would eventually be joined by some of his kin and kith. If re-embodied, he could even meet again the twins, Elrond, his father, and anyone else who had not died but sailed to Valinor when their time on Middle Earth came to an end.

After a few moments of comfortable hush, Elise finally scooted back towards the Elf, wrapped her arms around his middle, and laid her head back on Legolas’ chest. In response, the Prince held her tightly to him and rested his chin upon the top of her head, his own mind just as awhirl as was hers, although his was beset with the story she had told him. He had yet to hear exactly why she had taken to killing her fellow villagers, but Legolas did not need to ask to understand, for he could feel her lonesomeness now, even though he sat with her.

_No, she is not evil. She was never evil. Just an abandoned, petrified child. She started out by killing her family and the villagers not knowing what she was doing, not believing she was dead or that she was killing those whom she touched. Even after she realized this, I think she continued because of how frightened and lonely she was and grew to be as time went on without her. She may have acted selfishly in that regard, but she is just a child,_ he ruminated, turning his head to rest his cheek on the brightness of her yellow hair. Even to his own thinking, the Elf sounded like he was making excuses for her, but he could not believe the child he held now in his arms was anymore evil than was he. _She’s no more selfish than any other child, except her selfishness wasn’t throwing a tantrum or sneaking the last sweets rather than share, but seeking company and solace and having to kill to find it._


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Split this chapter in half (other half to come in the next few days, I hope) so I could work up the gumption to get it done. Enjoy!

The villagers were clearly not yet done purging the remainder of their unrest and agitation. Their frustration had gone on too long and Randric was doing an excellent job at keeping the menfolk riled. The blazing fires had entirely gutted the barn and house, such that the limestone slabs of the foundation and a few posts were all that was left of the structures. Even the bonfire was nearly spent, though some of the villagers were pulling planks off the fence along the road and bringing them back. Why they did this was obvious to Estel – the men thought they would soon need the fire rebuilt for the bodies they were determined to set ablaze next.

Still seated beside Legolas with Kalin, Estel watched the goings on across the way. Thus far, Liandra had kept the settlement’s men from taking the bodies by force; right now, she and the twins were still trying to talk them out of burning the corpses at all. Wendt appeared resigned to losing his chance to bury his family in the customary way of their village, but the elderly woman was keeping her promise to try to convince her kith not to do it. Aragorn couldn’t hear what was said and assumed Kalin would tell him if he missed something he ought to know. Both sentry and Ranger were avidly keeping their eye upon the men and Elves conversing, for if the men began trouble, either Estel or Kalin would join Elladan, Elrohir, and Reana in the fight.

When Kalin twisted to look off towards the copse of trees, Aragorn followed suit to see what the Wood-Elf had heard. A few moments later, Jakob came sprinting out of the coppice and into the field. He ran directly to Halbarad, bypassing his Chieftain, which might normally have irritated Estel, but since he was likely soon to die and his mind much overwrought with grief over his lover’s death, he knew it was only logical for Jakob to turn to Halbarad rather than Aragorn. The fiery-haired man’s beard bobbed up and down, its braids flapping comically as he ran, and making Aragorn huff in mild amusement at the sight. Halbarad turned at the last minute to face Jakob, having not heard him before Kalin and Estel, and thus nearly had his sword drawn upon Jakob.

If Jakob noted, he didn’t react, but came to a breathless halt before the older man to say, “Tomas says we are ready to go. We need only to mount up.”

With another glance towards the villagers, Halbarad made his way to Aragorn and Kalin, looked down upon the motionless and dying Prince’s body, and then asked his Chieftain, “Do you think it might be best to go ahead and take Legolas away? We can do as Lord Elladan suggested, with Jakob and Kalin,” he began, nodding towards the sentry but speaking to Aragorn, “taking the Prince to the lake to wait for us.”

Aragorn deferred to Kalin without asking. He merely looked at the Wood-Elf to have Kalin’s opinion, for Estel couldn’t decide what was worse – the thought of having to kill the villagers to protect Legolas’ dying rhaw, or not being with Legolas when the Elf’s time came to an end and his body died. Likewise, if Estel died here and his faer was released into the night, as was Elise’s soul, then with Legolas’ body gone at the lake, Aragorn might miss his chance to speak to his lover one last time ere dawn came, if all that were even possible. Kalin was thinking along the same lines, Aragorn could see, for the sentry looked down to his Prince, stroked Legolas’ predominant and high cheekbone with the knuckles of one hand, and then looked back to Estel with his own indecision.

Their hesitation kept them from making any resolution at all, as it turned out, for the time for talk was over between the menfolk and their own. As he and his twin came at a brisk trot to where Aragorn sat with his fellow Rangers and Kalin, Elrohir called out, “Halbarad!”

Jakob, Kalin, Halbarad, and Aragorn were instantly wary of what news the twins were bringing. Their alike bodies deciding simultaneously that more alacrity was required, the identical brothers began running agilely through the field, though Reana had stayed behind to accompany Liandra. Elladan began before they were even halfway to the others, shouting out, “Halbarad, Liandra wishes you to be with her when the men come for the bodies. I’m sorry, Wendt, but they cannot be convinced,” he told the blacksmith, his voice softening into a regretful tone as they were close enough now not to have to shout. “They will burn your family’s bodies.”

Both Halbarad and Wendt hurried to where the blacksmith’s family was laid out in a line, from youngest to oldest, with Halbarad’s question to Aragorn about moving Legolas moot for the nonce. Jakob took off back to the copse to stay with Tomas, as was best, for if the villagers intended to see the Elves and Rangers dead in the end, they might try to encircle the outsiders and attack Tomas to obtain the horses, and thus prevent Aragorn and his brothers and friends’ departure. It all depended upon how aggressive the menfolk became, how much they desired to burn Legolas and perhaps Estel, when they found out he had been touched by Elise, as well, and how organized Randric might make his fellow villagers ere the night was over.

As the twins walked the last few steps to where Estel and Kalin sat beside Legolas, their body language told the Ranger all he needed to know – Elladan and Elrohir expected combat soon. He had fought beside his brothers often enough before to know they were mentally preparing to kill the menfolk from the village to protect themselves, each other, and the rest of their companions. Elladan and Elrohir had lived for years beyond Aragorn’s comprehension, had killed more foes between the two of them multiple times more than the population of this entire settlement, and were consummate warriors – yet, they never took lightly killing folks not of the Dark, and if they were required to kill any villagers tonight, it would haunt the two brothers to have their hands forced into violence in this way. Normally, Estel might feel the same, but if it came to protecting his brothers or his friends, or Legolas’ body, then he would have no compunction about it.

He waited only long enough for his brothers to be able to hear him clearly before he asked, “What of Greenleaf? Did they demand to burn him?”

Neither twin answered until they were standing in front of Estel and Kalin. Elrohir shook his dark head but he looked no less worried than Aragorn when he replied, “They did not demand it. Yet. Randric, their leader, made some hint about it, however, and when Wendt’s kin’s bodies are burnt, I imagine he will next turn to Legolas to feed his fire.”

Both Aragorn and Kalin bristled to hear this, although they had both expected it. The Wood-Elf sentry grumbled low in his throat, his distressed groan sounding like a feral growl. “Legolas’ body is not yet dead. Did you tell the Edain this? I will kill everyone in this village before I let them burn my Prince’s body alive,” the Silvan promised softly, without anger, which showed Aragorn exactly how irate Kalin truly was, for he was beyond the scorch of incensement and now into the cold surety of enragement.

“Don’t worry,” Elladan told his brothers and the Silvan sentry, as if his saying it could make them do anything less than agonize over it. “They will not touch Greenleaf’s body. Not even if Greenleaf dies. He will not be the sacrificial lamb for these Edain’s folly.”

 _Thank Eru,_ he prayed. Never would he have doubted that his brothers would allow any harm to come to Legolas, but he had fretted once the Elf was dead, the twins might not be as amenable to keeping the villagers from the Prince. They had, after all, agreed with Halbarad about not wanting to kill living men to protect the corpses of dead men. _Thank you, Elbereth,_ the Ranger added, _for making my brothers unmoved in their adamancy to keep Legolas’ body from the fire._ Estel no more wanted to bury the Prince than he wanted to burn him, but if it came to it, Aragorn wanted for Kalin and the twins to be able to do it as they saw fit, perchance to lay Legolas’ body to rest someplace Thranduil could come pay his respects to his son’s memory; and if he were lucky, they might bury Estel right beside the laegel.

Randric began walking towards where the bodies laid, bringing with him eight or so of the approximately thirty men from the village. Reana followed the village’s healer, who walked with Randric, her hands gesticulating wildly as she continued her attempt to talk him out of forcing the issue. But he neither slowed nor stopped, and with his followers, walked on to where Wendt and Halbarad stood beside the corpses of his dead family. To Estel’s relief, none of the men carried torches. If they had, Estel would have interceded on his lover’s behalf, despite not feeling the Elf’s presence right now. He wanted no light in this general vicinity, and to ensure this, Aragorn would not hesitate to begin the violence soon to come if he felt it needed to protect Legolas’ faer.

Elladan and Elrohir moved away from Kalin and Estel such that they stood between the oncoming men and Legolas’ prone body, meaning they were the first line of defense should the menfolk decide to try to show their might against any of them, instead. While the Noldor did not have their weapons drawn, both had their hands upon them in clear intimidation; besides which, Elrohir and Elladan could have their swords drawn and have them piercing a man’s flesh ere any of the Edain would know what hit them.

Careful not to agitate the Elf’s broken ribs, Aragorn hefted Legolas from where he laid on the ground and into his arms, for Estel was eager to feel his lover’s weight for some unnamable reason he yearned to placate. He rested the Prince’s back against his thighs and held the Wood-Elf’s head in the crook of one bent arm. Just the slight weight of Legolas’ torso upon the human’s legs gave Aragorn ease of mind. He wished it could do the same for his body. Estel was shivering uncontrollably and could no longer hide it; he no longer had the strength to try. The sentry watched what was going on with Wendt and the villagers at the corpses until he noticed the intense shudders running through the Ranger, which jostled Legolas in Aragorn’s arms and caused Kalin to look at the Adan. Without comment, Kalin pulled Elladan’s rolled up cloak from the ground, which had been Legolas’ makeshift pillow when the Elf was lying upon the grass. The sentry crawled onto his knees and then closer to Estel, ere he whipped the cloak around the man’s shoulders, pulling it tight over his front and tugging it around Legolas.

“Thank you,” he murmured to Kalin, who only nodded slightly in response.

He knew he ought to lay the Prince back down, for even now, Legolas’ slight breathing was labored. Between his broken ribs and the slow failing of his rhaw, the Elf’s body might die, whether his faer lived on or not. _I suppose it matters little,_ the Adan deplored, hating himself for giving in to the adverse awareness of his lover’s death.

A rustling drew his and Kalin’s attention; from the copse of trees came Jakob again, who trotted to his Chieftain. He dropped down into a crouch beside Aragorn, looked at Legolas’ face to determine if the Elf was alive, and then whispered, “Tomas has given water and oats to all the horses, and I went over our supplies. All the waterskins are filled, we have enough food to last a few weeks without needing to hunt or forage, I think, especially with all the smoked jerky you and Legolas had. We can leave at any moment and ride hard without stopping, should the villagers try to follow us to exact revenge,” he said in bewilderment, for Jakob no more understood why the menfolk of the settlement had turned on the Rangers than did Estel. In fact, being that Jakob was well known in this village and had visited it often, it was likely even more confusing for the man.  

“Good. Thank you,” he told his friend. Noticing how Jakob was watching questioningly the goings on by the corpses, Aragorn explained, “I don’t know what they are arguing about now or why they have not begun to burn the bodies, but I wish they would get on with it and be done.”

“Liandra is still trying to argue against burning them all, telling them just to burn Elise. She is not winning the argument, however,” Kalin explained, since he could hear what was being said across the way better than could Aragorn or Jakob.

Crouched down beside Aragorn still, Jakob peered into Legolas’ face, concern furrowing his brow. “His lips are going blue,” he told his Chieftain.

At once and without consulting the Ranger, Kalin pulled his Prince off Aragorn’s lap and out of his arms; he laid Legolas back on the ground with tender devotion. _Elbereth’s flaming arse,_ he cursed, wanting to smack himself for not noticing the effect the position in which he had held Legolas had on the laegel. The sentry and two Rangers hovered over Legolas in anxiety, with Estel holding his own breath as he waited for his lover to breathe properly. After a few inhalations deeper than they had been while in Estel’s arms, Legolas’ pale face and cyanotic lips began to return to their normal color. Elrohir must’ve overheard Jakob’s comment or noticed the commotion, for he came over, leaving Elladan to watch over Liandra, Halbarad, and Wendt as they spoke to Randric.

“Is Greenleaf well?” he asked as he moved to kneel beside Kalin, who was adjusting his Prince’s body into some semblance of comfort.

Kalin deflected Elrohir’s question by answering, “He is fine. Or as fine as can be expected.”

Aragorn was grateful for Kalin not bringing up his idiotic lapse in judgment – a lapse which might have cost Legolas his life had not Jakob noticed what Aragorn had not. Elrohir gauged the Silvan’s pulse and felt his forehead for his temperature, which Estel already knew was too cool to be normal. “His heart still beats strongly. His rhaw will likely persist for a while longer.”

The twin did not sound terribly pleased by this, for to Elrohir, Legolas’ rhaw enduring would only prolong Estel’s belief the Prince could survive somehow. His Elven brother eyed how Aragorn was wearing Elladan’s cloak and how despite it and the extra tunic they had put on the Adan earlier, the man still shivered, but he did not say anything aloud about it. He didn’t need to. His fear for Estel was plain upon his face. Aragorn was once again shamed by how he was making the twins’ last few hours with him a hardship with his insistence of Legolas’ faer lingering, true though it was.

Elrohir leant down to place his ear upon Legolas’ chest and listened. “There is no rattling, at least. I don’t think his ribs have punctured his lungs, though if we need to move him to ride out of here, it might happen. Though perhaps Greenleaf’s rhaw will have let go by then. His body will still die, Estel,” Elrohir warned the human, though not without sympathy and his own sorrow to think of his friend’s death. “Do not doubt it. He is already dead, as far as we must be concerned, though we should say no such thing in front of these villagers,” Elrohir added, giving Randric and his riled up men a scowling glance to ensure none were near enough to overhear their conversation. “They will use it against us if they find out.”

Aragorn shifted uneasily, his desire to argue with Elrohir causing the man physical discomfort, so great was it welling inside him. But instead of quarreling against Elrohir’s adamancy, Aragorn asked his brother, “What is taking them so long? Wendt agreed to let them burn the bodies. Why aren’t they doing it?”

Elrohir shook his head in his own confusion, but tried to explain that which he wasn’t sure of, saying, “Liandra is putting up a fuss. I cannot know her mind, but I think she merely wants to make the men see the import of what they are doing. Perhaps she thinks if they realize they are shunning the proper burial rites, then perhaps they will feel some shame or guilt and refrain from continuing their behavior once they have what they want, even if it does not keep them from getting it.”

Adjusting his crouch so he sat back on his heels, Jakob ran a hand over his gaunt face, his brown eyes exhausted with dark circles of weariness under them. He adjusted the six-pointed star clasping his cloak closed, and then fidgeted with the braids of his beard, as was his way of displaying every kind of emotion – from anger to happiness, confusion or clarity of mind, boredom or excitement. To Kalin, the Ranger directed his inquiry, “Speaking of which – are we taking Legolas on ahead to the lake? If we get him out of sight, maybe we can get him out of mind. Or at least out of harm’s way.”

Again, Estel and Kalin shared a discontented, undecided moment between them, for neither knew what was best. Kalin was his Prince’s sentry and keeper of sorts and Estel was his lover, so one of them ought to be the one to make the decision, but they both deferred to the other, and nothing was decided yet again, for an uproar from near the corpses interrupted their conversation. Elrohir and Jakob both stood in a hurry, both walking quickly to Elladan to watch what was occurring. Aragorn shifted so he could see, and found the villagers were apparently no longer willing to listen to Liandra’s fussing or accept her attempt to stall them. Aragorn could now hear what was said, being that they were arguing loudly, and he noted with worry how Reana was following just a step behind the elderly healer, her hand upon the hilt of her blade in anticipation of an attack.

“…this is wrong and you know it, young man,” Liandra was chastising Randric, who tried to walk past the healer, though Liandra took his arm and tried to halt him. The man allowed this out of the ingrained respect he had for the elder woman. “Your mother was touched by Elise and died three weeks ago. Are you planning to dig her up and burn her, as well?”

Not bothering to answer, Randric easily pulled his arm free of Liandra’s hold. His fellow men began to divide up into pairs to carry the larger of the corpses between them, with one taking the arms and the other taking the feet of each body. None of them treated the bodies with any more respect than one would give a bag of wheat flour, much to a despondent Wendt’s distress. The massive, muscled, and tall blacksmith was pacing around and between the men taking his family’s bodies, while looking at each of the body’s faces in turn. Perhaps he was memorizing their visages, decayed though they were, or saying his final goodbyes to them before they were turned to ash – or perhaps, Estel worried, the seemingly placatory, broken man was about to lose him composure and instigate the combat for which the Noldor and Rangers were waiting. Halbarad trailed the blacksmith to keep his eye upon him, to try to stop Wendt from commencing what they all wished to avoid.

“Well?” Liandra prompted, standing in Randric’s way intentionally, and thus keeping him from the last unclaimed body, which was little Galeb, the baby whose corpse was wrapped in a blanket. “When will this end?”

“It will end when we say it will end,” Randric replied, pushed past the healer, and leant down to pick up little Galeb, causing Liandra to reach out to try to take the infant’s corpse from him.

The stooped over man did not exactly push the elderly healer, but he held his arm out to stave off her attempt to snatch the child, and in doing so, Liandra became unbalanced and staggered back, only to be caught by the ever-vigilant Reana. Randric’s face grew guarded and hard, whereas at first, when noticing he had nearly knocked Liandra over, he had been about to apologize. But to lead these men into doing his bidding, to keep them riled up to finish what he had started, Randric could not appear weak before them, lest they begin to question what they were doing.

Galeb’s blanket wrapped body in his arms, Randric strode forward to Liandra, though he stopped dead in his tracks when Reana quickly, deftly slipped in front of the elderly woman in protection of her, the Elleth’s sword halfway out of its sheath. The villager’s feigned hardness did not waver, however, as he warned the healer while glaring at her over Reana’s shoulder, “We will drive this evil out of our village, Liandra, and those who brought it with them. Take care whose side you choose, lest you end up sharing their fate.”

With that, Randric stalked off, walking behind the other menfolk toward the once more blazing bonfire, the child’s tiny body in his arms. Having heard the unveiled threat Randric made to Liandra and to themselves, the twins and Jakob hurried to where Reana stood with the healer, but by then, the Elleth had taken the woman’s arm to lead her back to where Aragorn and the two Wood-Elves were, effectively removing her from the vicinity of the other villagers and placing her amongst those with whom she would be safest, while the twins and Jakob incited Halbarad and Wendt to come back to the others, as well, such that they could all stay together.

But Wendt was incensed at Randric’s treatment and threat to Liandra, and began bellowing in his deep voice about the indignity of Randric’s actions. He called out, “Just do what you must!” When Wendt started walking towards the men carrying the corpses, Halbarad and Elladan worked in tandem to halt him, with Elladan laying both hands upon the smith’s broad chest so he could not get any farther. While this kept Wendt from stalking after the others, it did not quiet him, and the man shouted, “Burn them if it makes you feel better! Go on, you loathsome swine. But no one else need be hurt over this. Don’t threaten Liandra, the Rangers, or the Elves, who’ve only come here to help us!”

It was impossible for the menfolk not to have heard Wendt, but none of them responded. Instead, they carried their new fodder for the fire to the barnyard. Soon, the pungent and disgusting smell of burning flesh would permeate the area, Estel knew, and he suddenly wanted to be gone from here as soon as possible, regardless of whether Elise still existed or not. He didn’t want his final breaths to be imbued with the smell of scorching human flesh. He considered asking Jakob to remain while he and Kalin took Legolas to the lake, but then reconsidered, for as he had worried a short while ago, if his Elven lover’s faer tried to return here in hopes of finding Estel, he would not know where the man had gone, and Aragorn was not taking the chance of missing out on any final moments he might have with the laegel.

 _I wish it had not come to this, but in the end,_ he thought again as he had previously, while watching the men carry their burdens and his companions and brothers around him shifting in anxious anticipation of the dawn and the end of this travesty, _perhaps it will be for the best. If nothing else, we can make certain nothing of Elise’s curse lurks in her remains._

Randric and his mob laid the bodies down on the ground, leaving them for a couple of the others to burn, and then the stooped over farmer said something and motioned with his hand. At once, the majority of the men gathered with Randric and began walking towards where the Eldar and Rangers stood. Some of the men had the farm tools they had found in the small garden by the barn, others had some of the remaining torches lit and at ready, while a few had small daggers and such, with one man having a maul looped in his belt.

Estel stood and checked that his broadsword was ready. Randric and his followers were coming for Legolas’ body, the Ranger assumed, and he would kill them all before he let them take his Greenleaf to be burnt like refuse in the flames.


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going on a brief hiatus. I mean very brief. A couple of weeks or so (at most four) without a new chapter. I need to reread the story and make sure the ending I have written is on track with no continuity errors, blah blah blah. Basic authoring stuff that usually happens prior to publishing, if this were a real book. 
> 
> Enjoy the chapter, dear readers, and thanks to those of you who admit to reading the story by commenting! :D At least I didn't end the chapter on a cliffhanger or something.

The Elf felt no discomfort from sitting motionless for so long; he felt no hunger or thirst. Elise still sat in his lap, curled up against him, with her arms around his middle and her head upon his chest in the innocent repose of a child who might have been sleeping, had Elise any need of sleep. While Legolas had some perception of the weight of her upon his legs, he considered it was almost as if his mind were generating this discernment as a means of coping with the impossibility of existing without his body, thereby creating this sensation because he expected to feel it. Just trying to suss all this out unsettled him even more than the situation itself, so he instead studied the small child gathered in his arms.

 _She reminds me of Estel when Estel was young,_ he thought again as he had several times before; this time, he compared her to Estel in hopes of justifying to himself the whelming protectiveness he felt for the girl. Even knowing he needed to find some way to remove or destroy the splinter, the Elf dawdled on setting about this task, for forcing the issue would hurt Elise’s feelings at the least and end her at the most. As he had so often taken care not to hurt Estel’s feelings when the Adan had been a juvenile and prone to misunderstandings or feelings of being left out because of his being young and human, Legolas did not want to be the cause of any distress for Elise, either. _But it would be better for her to move on, to be with her family, to have the peace of the Halls of Awaiting,_ he tried to convince himself. Elise had claimed she wanted to stay with him because he had promised to be her friend forever, but children often did not know what was best for them. Besides, although right now she might think to prefer his company, if his faer vanished come dawn, she would be alone once more. The trick, the Elf knew, was to make her see reason before dawn – though truly, he wished to do it as soon as possible, if he could – such that before his own potential dispersion into the hereafter, Legolas could ascertain Estel would be well and the village safe. He did not mind to die if his death saved the lives of Aragorn and the humans in the settlement.

In surprise upon noticing how far the moon had strayed since last he noticed, Legolas wondered, _How long have we been sitting here?_ Normally, the Prince had a highly accurate internal sense of time. If he wished to wake before sunrise, he had only to decide to do so and the next morning he would rouse just before Anor began to grace the horizon. Legolas glanced back at the moon; he gauged the time of night by where the silvery sliver of Ithil sat and unfortunately, he found his time running short. _I hope Estel and the others are still fine. I should go back to check on them. I need to be certain Elise has kept her promise._

With this reminder of his Adan lover, Legolas conjectured about whether Elise had already broken the curse or if she needed to do something else to see it done. Before bringing Legolas to the lake, Elise had promised Estel would be fine; Legolas had taken her word in good faith. He hated to doubt her, but she was only a child and wont to the egocentric ways of the very young. He peered down into the quiet Adan’s face. Elise had her eyes closed but she did not sleep; instead, she seemed utterly content to be reclining in the Elf’s lap, being held with affection and feeling safe for the first time in weeks, he could only assume. This was what she had longed for, what she had killed for, and it had taken many weeks and many lives for Elise to obtain the satiation of her simple, natural desire for a friend.

While he hated to disrupt her contentment, the Wood-Elf could delay no longer, and so prompted, “Melui pen?”

She opened her eyes, grinned at the sobriquet and the Elf who had called her ‘sweet one,’ and then snuggled her head against his chest again, mussing the braids Legolas had plaited into her fine, blonde hair. The Silvan beamed back at her. He did not have much experience with children – especially human children – except for the time he had gladly spent with Estel years ago. Yet, this child was easy to read, for she only wanted the warmth of his company. She was either so very desperate for friendship that she was not choosy about to whom to cling for it, or she saw in Legolas something he could not discern. Although, Elise had told Legolas how he looked like her mother; if this similarity alone was enough to foment her trust and kindle a desire for his companionship, Legolas did not know, but she had taken to him very quickly. In fact, Elise had taken to Legolas ere he had even seen her, it seemed, and been fascinated by both him and Estel while the Elf and Ranger stayed at this very lake.

When she closed her eyes and suspired softly in guileless pleasure, Legolas mimicked her by sighing and closing his own eyes in similar serenity; this in itself led his mind astray, as he marveled how either of them had sighed when neither of them could breathe. Diverted by his errant musings, he smiled at the odd thought and told himself, _I will have to ask Estel what he thinks of it,_ as the Ranger loved to discuss ponderous topics like this, where there was no clear answer and all was speculation. The notion to ask Estel his opinion incited his anxiety over having forgotten the concerns he held for his human lover. His fretfulness began anew.

 _Focus, you fool,_ he railed at himself. He could not allow his mind to drift in the tranquil ease of this half-existence, with Elise unwittingly facilitating it by her mere peaceful presence. _Help Estel and the villagers, and then you can rest or pass on to what comes after – but Estel must come first._ This was not the first time the Wood-Elf had cast aside his well-being or evaded death to guarantee Aragorn would survive, but it would be the last, Legolas realized. He must see this through to the end.

“Elise,” he said again, this time more firmly, which prompted her clover eyes to open again as she listened when Legolas implored, “I need to know. You have already removed the curse from Estel, haven’t you? How did you do it? I cannot stay here in indolence until I know he will be safe and well.”

Beneath his arms, Elise’s body tensed and she seemed to curl into herself; she removed her embrace from around Legolas’ waist only to wrap her thin arms around her own waist, instead, while she shifted on his lap away from his chest and bowed her head to avoid his gaze. Foreboding, deep and vast, whelmed up within the Prince. A hidden pool of menace had been tapped inside him, such that it swelled upwards from his belly, into his chest, and choked him with its baleful presentience. Yes, she was merely a child, and like a child, Elise was not very good at mendacity or stoicism, but displayed her emotions as if they were written upon her face. And what Legolas read there, try though she did to keep her downturned visage away from his astute eyes, was this: Elise had been lying to him. She was afraid for the Elf to find out it was so.

With millennia of practice, Legolas was much better at concealing his emotions, however, and kept his despair and ire for her hidden beneath the pleasantness with which he asked, “Please, tithen pen. Tell me. I must know you have kept your promise. Have you removed the imprecation from Estel?”

She played with the hem of her sackcloth dress, pulling at a loose thread there. Legolas could see the girl thought about lying to him, only to decide honesty would benefit her more. “I can’t remove it. I don’t know how.” She dared to look up at him, saw the hurt disbelief Legolas did not try to hide, and quickly looked back down to where her hands were now fisted in the rough cloth of her dress. Again, she said, quietly and meekly, “I don’t know how to remove it from him. I’m sorry.”

Confused gloom overtook the Elf, dumbfounding him completely. Before they came to the lake, Elise had sworn to Legolas that Estel would be safe and well, and now she told him the exact opposite, for if she could not remove the curse, then Aragorn was doomed to die. _She lied to me. She lied to trick me into being her friend. She knew if she admitted this before, I would never have agreed to remain with her. And now, she hopes honesty will spare her my anger, for she thinks I am stuck with her regardless, and hopes to earn my forgiveness now when she thinks I have no choice._ Fury and resentment quickly replaced his confusion. Careful not to scare the girl, as regardless of her actions she was still just a child, Legolas lifted her away from him, off his lap, and sat her on the bank beside him. Had Elise been an adult – and a man – Legolas would have thrashed her for this deception.

As it was, he was close to losing his temper and shouting at the girl, so he once more calmed himself before speaking. He did not want to frighten her away and thus lose the chance to learn more of what she meant. Already, Elise appeared on the verge of tears, which might lead to her storming off in a childish sulk, and since she could disappear in the blink of an eye, Legolas might not be able to find her if she decided to abscond. Deliberately, evenly, he asked, “What do you mean you don’t know how? I agreed to stay with you if you spared Estel’s life. You promised me, Elise. You gave me your word.”

When she looked up at him, tears began to trail down her face. Shrilly, she cried out at him, “But I can’t! I don’t know how!”

Devastated by this admission, Legolas stood abruptly with the need to move, to act, and to return to the farm at once. _Please don’t let him have died already,_ he prayed, though if Estel had not, the Elf had no way of ensuring Aragorn would not soon do so anyway. Staring around the lake, the area dark and peaceful in the dim light of night, Legolas wondered if he could merely blink back to the farm as he and Elise had done in coming here, or if he would need to run by foot. If the latter were the case, it would take him hours to get back to the farm, by which time it was likely to be dawn and his temporary reprieve from the Halls of Awaiting over. Most disturbingly, he had no idea how long the fire of Aragorn’s faer would remain lit since Elise’s dousing imprecation was still upon it, and he did not have the superfluity of time to linger here in argument with the girl.

In agitation, he rubbed his brow, which he could not feel beneath his hand and so the action provided him no reprieve from the phantom ache he felt here. Legolas wanted to know even though he could guess the answer already, “Why? Why did you lie to me?”’

“I didn’t lie. Estel will be all right, I promise. But I can’t remove the curse from him. He will die, as you did, and then he can be with us,” she tried to reason, making this sound as though it was a perfectly acceptable compromise. To her, it likely was. Elise scrambled to her feet and tried to take the Elf’s hand, though Legolas yanked it away before she could, as he did not want to be drawn into her fabricated amity again.

“Being dead is not the same as being alright!” he shouted at her, and then regretted it when she shrank away from him in crestfallen fear. Legolas gave up trying to find out more information and instead asked for her help, ere the girl fled from him. He held a hand to his belly, wishing it were Estel’s hand, which would have quelled his nervousness as it had done so often over the last weeks. He began by saying in appeasement, “I’m sorry for yelling, tithen pen, but I am scared for Estel, and right now, I need to get back to the farm. Please, Elise, how did you bring us here, and can you take us back just as quickly?”

With this, at least, Elise was sure of her ability to comply, even if she continued to cry and was sullen at Legolas’ desire to be with Estel rather than stay here with her. “Yes, but we can’t go right to where he is, because we might end up where he or someone else is standing.”

Legolas understood what she meant and hoped she didn’t intend to take them too far from the farm, because time was not on his side right now. She reached out for his hand, which he welcomed now, and ere the Elf’s fingers could curl around hers in response, they were in the copse of trees stretching alongside the field near to the girl’s family’s farm. Reaching all the way into the clouds, the diffuse, twin columns of smoke from the fires set to the house and barn were clearly visible from where they stood amidst the oaks and walnut trees, making him keenly aware of the danger in which his friends were mired, what with the mob of menfolk in a state of mind where burning perfectly good housing was deemed acceptable. Unlike before, Legolas did not spare a moment to wonder at the miraculousness of the feat of their instantaneous travel. He thought only of getting to Estel.

And yet, before the Elf could begin away with a gloomy Elise following, Legolas heard a familiar nicker and snort from behind him. He turned at the noise to find Arato standing there, his glossy, obsidian eyes fixated upon the Elf. Legolas startled in surprise, thinking, _Can he see me?_

Elise had told the Elf how her baby brother had seen her, which Legolas considered might be because little Galeb was so young and thus his faer only newly coalesced with his rhaw. This made the Prince wonder if Arato were capable of seeing him or sensing him, and how it could be so. When Legolas stepped closer, Arato tossed his head and nickered again, his obsidian eyes following the advance of the Wood-Elf before him.

 _He must,_ the Silvan decided with a startled smile. _He_ can _see me._

The deer at the lake had not been able to see the two haunts only a few feet away, but Arato could, the Silvan was sure of it. But then, Estel could sense Legolas’ presence, as had Kalin done as well right before the Prince and Elise left the field for the lake, which made the Wood-Elf think that as attached to his master as he was, Arato must be able to sense Legolas, too, even if he could not actually see him – though Arato certainly gave Legolas the impression that he was watching his master’s approach.

Unthinkingly, Legolas ambled closer to his horse to caress the beast’s muzzle, to calm his antsy steed as he had so often done in the past, but Elise caught the Elf’s uplifted hand and reminded Legolas, “Don’t. You will kill him if you touch him.”

Longingly, Legolas looked at Arato, who was stamping his feet and tossing his head about in consternation at having his master near but being unable to greet him. The mount strained at the lead – tied to a low branch of the oak beside Arato – which kept the horse from moving closer. It suddenly occurred to Legolas that Arato would likely never see his master again, and he found himself worrying over whether his faithful horse would fare well when Legolas never returned to him.

He wasn’t sure if Arato could hear him, but he spoke aloud to the horse anyway, telling him, “Calm yourself, my friend. Kalin will take care of you,” he promised. “He will take you home to the forest, and keep you for himself, if my father allows it.”

He was unsurprised when Arato did as bid and calmed as Legolas had implored of him. Tomas, who had been at the other side of the array of horses, checking tack to be prepared for a quick departure, came over to check up on the noisy stallion, only to find the dappled mount now composed. When Tomas grew near, Legolas began to back away, for he was unwilling to come into accidental contact with the Ranger. Giving Arato a final smile, he turned; with Elise, the Elf took off through the trees toward the fires, which were easily marked beacons because of their smoke and illumination in the dark of the night.

Legolas had forgotten how keen the need to walk into the licking, hissing flames, to give himself to the bright, ambient light had been while he was here before; this yearning grew stronger the closer they came to the source of smoke and luminosity. As if sensing this of Legolas’ – and perhaps she could, since she and the laegel shared between them a slight connection of their emotions and thoughts – Elise took the Elf’s hand again to keep tabs upon him, while telling the Prince in a motherly, fretful manner too prudent for a child so young, “Stay back from your friends and the fire, ok? Don’t get too close.”

He nodded absently at her and walked faster. As they exited the fringe of trees at the edge of the coppice, the Elf’s restlessness to see Estel, to ascertain his lover was well, became utmost panic when he at first did not see Aragorn. It wasn’t until Wendt walked from the way that Legolas caught sight of the Adan, who with Kalin was standing beside the Prince’s soulless body. A tremulous frisson of relief swept through the Elf, for though Aragorn shivered beneath the two tunics he wore and the two cloaks in which he was wrapped, the Ranger appeared well enough for now. He had his hand upon the hilt of his broadsword though, while he watched the majority of the menfolk as they slowly walked in a group from the barnyard and across the fallow field.

 _Thank you, Ilúvatar. Thank you for keeping him safe for this long,_ he prayed, adding, _please, just keep him safe a while longer until I figure out how to end all of this._

He hoped it was not too much to ask of the Creator, of the giver of the Flame Imperishable which even now dissipated from Estel’s body because of Elise’s curse – a curse most likely originating from some remnant of the fell magic of the Witch-King of Angmar during his war against the Edain of the north, when he sent the wights who would eventually inhabit the Barrow-downs. Although there were some Silvan who deemed the story of the creation of Eä to be a fable, Legolas wholeheartedly believed in the account of Ainulindalë. Ilúvatar’s song was a complex harmony of the Maker’s will, and even should one try to work against it – as had Melkor tried repeatedly when Eru set the Ainur to singing into eventuation the plans for his creation – one was truly working within it. Legolas could only trust Aragorn had a greater purpose in Ilúvatar’s plans than a paltry death by a lonely child, and thus, the Prince trusted that his lover might be saved tonight to live to fill Eru’s purpose for him. He had little faith in his own importance, however, so set his sights merely upon saving Estel. As far as he was concerned, the Flame Imperishable of his own being belonged to his rhaw no longer; if he did not go to the Halls of Awaiting when the curse was broken, Legolas’ faer would either be snuffed out of existence entirely, remain in this lingering state, or worse yet, be cast into Avakúma for being an aberrant abomination of the Maker’s gift of life.

He considered these possibilities in the transient, rapid manner of half-noticed thoughts running through one’s head, and then cast them all aside, telling himself, _Estel. As long as Estel is safe…_ but then amended in afterthought, _and the villagers, then I will face my own fate with no fear._

Beside him, Elise was looking up at the Wood-Elf in confusion, for she could intuit some of what the Silvan was thinking, even if she did not understand it entirely. Legolas peeled his gaze away from Estel for a moment to give her a reassuring smile, which she returned eagerly with optimism that the Elf was no longer irate with her for lying to him about Aragorn’s curse being broken.

Just having his Adan lover alive and sentient was cause for celebration; and yet, Legolas tempered his relieved elation and forced into his mind the poised stillness he oft felt before battle ensued. Now, his fight would not be won with bow and arrows or a long knife, but his acuity and acumen, for the Elf needed to find some means of doing what Elise had not – to end the imprecation upon Aragorn. He looked about him to gauge the situation. He was unnerved to discover that his friends’ positions had deteriorated while he and Elise were away. The tension between the two groups of people hung dank and thick like the smell of smoke in the air, similarly obfuscating any chance of finding common ground. While the Rangers and Elves were better armed and better trained, Legolas worried for any of them to get hurt in the slightest; being that they were outnumbered, it was highly likely for at least one of his friends and acquaintances to be injured, perhaps seriously or fatally.

Liandra was standing with the Eldar and Rangers, as was Wendt, Legolas noted, and was pleased to see it. They would need all the help they could get. Elladan and Elrohir stood slightly in front of everyone else, their own weapons not drawn but not needing to be drawn, for the twins could make short work of anyone who came at them. Reana stood directly in between and behind her charges, ready to push between them to join the fray in protection of her Lord’s sons. Jakob stood to the twins’ right side, Halbarad to their left, Wendt was pacing a short route behind Reana, and Aragorn stood at Legolas’ feet. Kalin remained beside his Prince – just where he had always been, Legolas noted with melancholic fondness for his sentry. The stooped over farmer and his riled up kith were untrained at tactics, the Prince could tell, for they walked in a tight group, when if they had any knowledge of strategy, they would have spread out to encircle the Rangers and Elves and to ensure enough room for melee. No, instead, they were hesitant and haughty as they grew closer, with the farmer leading the way at the head of the group of men, though he never walked fast enough to outpace them.

Never had the Silvan Prince felt so helpless during what would soon prove to be an altercation than he did at this moment. Ephemeral and weaponless, Legolas’ hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. His notion to find a way to save Estel gave way to the immediate need to ensure the Ranger and his friends’ safety from the villagers. At the moment, though, the Elf was unsure of why the villagers were approaching with hostile aim; that they intended ill was clear, for most carried some makeshift weapon in hand. Had Legolas the use of his body, the Elf would have been able to smell the reek of adrenaline and sweat wafting off the nervous villagers.

Beside him, Elise startled the Elf when she gave a strangled cry. With the hand not holding Legolas’ hand, she pointed to where a couple of villagers remaining in the barnyard were dragging her family’s bodies closer to the bonfire. “What are they doing?” she bemoaned in puzzlement.

He spoke tersely without bothering to soften his explanation, for even though she was a child, she needed to know the truth of the terror and desperation she had created with her actions, “To rid themselves of you, tithen pen. They fear you. They fear you will continue to kill, and they hope by burning the bodies, they can end your killing of their friends and family.”

She looked up at him with her clover-tinted eyes blown wide and her mouth hanging agape. The lack of understanding on the child’s face was expected but not enough to excuse her actions. Still, Legolas’ heart ached for the young girl. Before returning to the farm, he had begun the effort to convince Elise into allowing him to remove or destroy the splinter because he thought Aragorn already safe and the curse removed; now when he knew Elise could not or would not remove the imprecation, Legolas did not want for the girl’s own curse to be lifted – at least, not until he had tried everything in his power to save Estel, for he had no idea whether ending Elise would end the curse upon Aragorn, or if it would eliminate his only avenue to try to aid his beloved Ranger. Had the Prince’s attention not focused exclusively upon the group of men coming towards the Eldar and Rangers, Legolas might have been fearful to realize the villagers could destroy the splinter and thus possibly end Elise, for they had her body with her kin’s corpses; but right now, Estel and his brothers, Kalin, Reana, and the other Edain were facing a different, direct danger demanding all of Legolas’ awareness. The Edain’s leader and his group paused about halfway to their destination, with the farmer turning his back upon the Eldar and Edain around Legolas’ body. The stooped over farmer was whispering instructions to his mates.

 _What do the villagers seek to accomplish now?_ he wondered. To his aggravation, some of the men carried lit torches, which would prevent him from getting close to the melee, should it come to that, though how he could help was still a conundrum to him. It was a problem he intended to solve, though; he could not stand here and watch his friends fight.

Try though the Prince did to listen to the men’s leader so he might know what peril approached and how he might assist his friends and lover, Elise began to sob loudly when she saw how one of the men picked up the bundled corpse of her brother, handling little Galeb’s body with no care or respect at all while he ambled to the bonfire. This drew Legolas’ attention to the event, as well, just in time to see as the man unceremoniously threw the blanket bundled infant’s corpse into the raging flames.

Elise shrieked in agonized sorrow, her hand gripping the Prince’s so tightly that had they been real, she would have broken his fingers. As it was, both the sight and the sound of Elise’s agony broke the Prince’s stoic attentiveness to his lover’s plight such that he thought only of how to help Elise in that moment. In instinctual response to the grieving child’s wails, the kindhearted Silvan hauled the girl around, away from the sight, and wrapped her in his arms, where he held her tight and hid her face against his belly so she wouldn’t see her brother’s body as it burnt in the fire.

“Make them stop!” she begged the Elf in between huge, snuffling breaths. “Please, make them stop!”

Legolas could do no such thing; by Elise’s own admonishment, he could not go near the flames’ light, and even if he could, he could not speak to the men nor move anything to end their task. To the girl he soothed, “Hush, sweet child.” Hugging her harder and hiding her face back into the intangible tunic over his belly when she tried to pull away to see what the villagers at the fire were doing now, Legolas reasoned, “Your brother is gone, Elise. It is only his body they are burning. Little Galeb cannot feel it. He is with Námo now, with your mother and father, and your grandfather.”

Seeing that the villagers’ rouser was still giving instructions to his kith and the Rangers and Elves were unwearyingly waiting for the menfolk to advance, Legolas gave his consideration to the bonfire in time to observe as the men gathered Emler’s body next. One took hold of the man’s feet, the other his wrists, and they swung Emler by their holds back and forth until they had worked up enough momentum to toss him into the blaze like a log of wood. Legolas longed to do as the girl asked – to make the men cease – if only to appease the child’s keening. She cried as if the men were killing her family, rather than incinerating their bodies. The infant’s corpse had yet to begin truly burning, but the men threw Emler’s body right on top of it regardless, which smothered the flames of the bonfire and cast up a shower of ash that further dampened the blaze. The few villagers left behind to see to this task talked amongst themselves for a moment ere they decided to pull free planks from the fence around the enclosure in which the animals had been kept, where they had died from starvation and desiccation. And still, Legolas kept Elise’s weeping visage held snug to his belly so she could be spared the sight.

By now, the other villagers were done with their palaver and walking. They were nearly across the field and to where his friends waited. The three Noldorin Elves still stood in front of everyone else, with the Rangers just off to either side and slightly behind – save for Estel, who remained at Legolas’ body’s feet, while Kalin was beside his Prince’s head.

“Liandra,” the Wood-Elf heard Elladan quietly command the elderly healer. “Go through the copse and find Tomas. He will keep you safe.”

For a moment, it appeared the woman would not comply. She likely still held hopes of forefending this altercation. But then, without argument, she hitched up her long skirts, did as bade, and took off towards the tree line. When she walked past Estel, she squeezed the Ranger’s upper arm briefly, and Aragorn spun on heel to watch as she entered the coppice and was out of sight in the darkness.

 _I am here, Estel,_ he wished to tell his lover. He might have spoken it aloud, but it didn’t seem prudent to distract the man when a fight seemed destined to occur, though over what, the Prince had yet to understand. Even without speaking aloud, Legolas was heartened to see how Aragorn was casting his gaze around behind him and to the sides, where there was no one; he could only assume Estel sensed his presence as he had done earlier and thus looked for the Wood-Elf now as he had before. _I am here, meleth nin, and I will do whatever I must to save you._

One of the men, who began to walk more quickly than his brethren and their leader and therefore arrived ahead of the main group of stirred up menfolk, stepped up to where Elladan, Elrohir, and Reana stood, his maul brandished before him. The rest of the men were soon right behind their hammer carrying companion, with the stooped over man urging them on but calling them to a halt just behind the most adventurous villager with the maul. Impulsively, hurriedly, and oblivious of his lack of physical body, Legolas extricated himself from Elise’s tight embrace and moved forward to be of aid, for he could not stand still and watch these men attack his friends without joining the skirmish.

However, Elise barred him from moving by taking hold of the back of his ethereal tunic. She reminded him in an earsplittingly sharp scream, “They have torches! You can’t go near the light!”

She spoke truthfully, Legolas knew, although it scalded his honor for him to know he would not be able to fight alongside his Noldorin kith, the Rangers, and his faithful sentry. He cast a glance towards the bonfire, where the men were still trying to get the flames to burn Emler and little Galeb’s corpses, then looked back to the throng of villagers before the Noldor. The stooped over man walked a little closer until he was only a step behind his maul wielding companion.

“Randric,” Elladan greeted calmly, giving the mob’s leader no more than cursory respect. “You have the bodies of Wendt’s family. Burn them and be gone from here.”

The stooped over man, whose name was apparently Randric, shook his head in a ponderous, mendaciously apologetic manner. He smiled wolfishly, baring every tooth still remaining in his head, and showing them to be dark with disease. “Be gone from here? We live here. You are the ones who don’t belong.”

“Then I and my friends shall leave you to burn down your whole village, if you like,” Elrohir replied in a similarly farcically amicable tone. He returned Randric’s smile. Legolas had seen that smile upon Elrohir’s face before – it usually ended with someone paying a hefty price for upsetting the Noldo. Elrohir added, “I assume you have no problems with our leaving.”

Staring on in the wide-eyed, vacant manner of those who have resigned their will to the leadership of another – in this case, to Randric, who would end up getting these menfolk hurt or killed by his poor guidance – the villagers watched all this with no participation save for their being there with makeshift weapons in hand. Days ago, Aragorn had told Legolas how the villagers protected themselves from raiders and Orcs; if any of these men were among those who fought to protect their village, Legolas would be surprised. These Edain were the dregs of the settlement – the Prince guessed this both from how they had responded easily to the rage of the mob Randric had formed and how they seemed not to know what to do with this rage other than threaten a group of people who without second thought could cut them apart piecemeal. The Silvan was only glad that in their hurry to form this mob to burn down the farm and the corpses, they had not found true weapons; else, the odds of one of Legolas’ own people or friends being hurt would be greater.

“We’ve no problem at all with your leaving. Leave as you like; say true, we will not stop you.” The stooped over farmer nodded his head as he spoke and gestured towards the copse behind the Eldar and Rangers. “In fact, we will wish you a safe journey and won’t even complain that you’ve taken a few of our horses. We will call that recompense for the good the Rangers have done here, for figuring out what was causing the deaths of our kith and kin. But our goodwill ends there. We will take care of this problem ourselves from here on out,” Randric boasted in egregious arrogance, for if the Eldar and Rangers here had yet to eliminate the threat to the villagers, the villagers themselves had little chance to do it.

The tension between the two groups of people seemed to ease a bit with Randric’s promise and his strange, unexpectedly friendly words. Had he the lungs to do so, Legolas might have let out a long and relieved exhale to hear this; except, he had the impression Randric was lulling his friends into a false peace ere he issued some ultimatum or pronouncement. If he had only meant to ask them to leave, Randric would not have brought almost thirty villagers across the field with him to meet the Elves and Watchers. The Prince was not the only one to have suspicions, it seemed, for Kalin pulled his sword, the honed and finely crafted blade making no sound as it slid from its leather lined sheath. Meanwhile, Estel once more looked for Legolas’ presence, down at the Wood-Elf’s immobile body, and then back to the area around him in search of the Silvan whom he could sense but not see.

Halbarad stepped forward and to the center, nearer to the twins, and bowed his head a bit to the villagers, offering them his humble gratitude with this simple gesture, and apparently believing this to be all over; else, the man was an apt dissembler. The strands of silver hair not caught in its short tail at Halbarad’s neck fell over his weathered face as he again tilted his head down while stating, “Then I thank you, and we will be on our way.”

Randric again smiled his bitter, vile grin, and any hope Legolas had for no blood to be shed vanished. The farmer held up his hand, affected a forgetful face, and as if he had only just remembered this, told the Eldar and Rangers, “Oh, just one more thing. We plan to burn all the corpses, including that one,” he said while pointing at Legolas’ insentient but still very much alive body lying on the ground between the fuming vigilance of Estel and Kalin.

 _Sweet Elbereth. They intend to burn my body while it still breathes,_ he realized. It might not have mattered for the villagers to do such a thing to his body, as it was lost to him, but knowing his friends – especially Estel and Kalin – would fight to their deaths to prevent this from happening, the Prince foresaw the butchery soon to occur. Moreover, he could not imagine standing here watching himself burn alive. His mind recoiled from the very thought.

Aloud, he whispered in horror, “No.” He tried to walk forward once more, only to be stopped by the unnaturally strong hold of the little girl who had taken his faer from the rhaw the villagers now wished to incinerate while its heart still beat. He turned to Elise while trying to pull his unreal tunic out of her apparitional hands, saying, “Let go. I can’t let them,” he told her, meaning that he couldn’t let his friends be hurt to try to save his body, though Elise only saw the anguish and terror in her new and cherished friend Legolas.

With her sweet and innocent face tilted up to him, the tears thereon iridescent in the hoary light of the dim moon overhead, Elise began to change incrementally as Legolas watched. The staggered and fearful Elf could not turn away from the sight of the tears on the haunt’s cheeks turning to molten flames, her green eyes catching afire until they glowed the unholy red of burning coals, and the innocence of her features becoming jealously vindictive as she told the Wood-Elf, “They won’t hurt you. I won’t let them.”


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, ok. I didn't think the last chapter was a cliffhanger, so here's the next one which is definitely not a cliffhanger. Now I'm going to take my very brief hiatus and will be back in a couple weeks or months or years. However long it takes to edit what I've written so far. Thanks for reading.

“Elise, no, please,” he told the girl. Legolas was hesitant to touch the haunt because he had spent the last couple of days in fear of her as she appeared now. He forced his hand to reach out to take hold of her shoulder and stopped her with what would have been a cruelly tight grip, had either of them been capable of feeling any pain. “Wait,” Legolas implored with a shout when she did not cease trying to pull away from him. “Please, wait and listen to me for a moment.”

Legolas quickly released his hold of her, his instinctive fear making him startle backwards when Elise did as asked and turned both her diaphanous, consuming form and her burning, mordant gaze to the Elf. The night was dark already, but the illumination from the torches and the slight light from the moon bent away from her insipid silhouette, leaving an aura so caliginous around the girl that Legolas was immediately reminded of the absolute darkness of the cave’s pit in which he’d been trapped weeks ago while struggling to end Mithfindl. And just like the total obscuration of the cave, the haunt could draw him in and end him without second thought, had she the desire, for both offered nothing but endless suffering and damnation. Before, she was just a girl; now, she showed the taint of the splinter’s imprecation upon her. Had Legolas a heart, it would have been beating out of his chest in terror, even though her rage was not set upon him.

He had seen her look like this before, yes, but never _quite_ like this, for he had never seen her appear so unreservedly infuriated. It had hurt her to see her kin tossed into the fire, but as Legolas had told her, none of them was alive to feel it. Legolas, however, was very much alive – or his rhaw was, at least – and his faer was aware and able to watch the blazing obliteration of his body. Legolas’ dismay was all it had taken for Elise to lose the innocent, sweet demeanor of her living self and become the vengeful, destructive haunt who had rapaciously taken from her villagers their lives, all to sate her need for their evanescent companionship. When she reached out to take his hand to comfort him, for she saw the fear upon his face and thought it was for the men’s desire to destroy his body and did not know it was truly for her, the Wood-Elf almost yanked his hand from the way ere she had hold of it; only his immense need to remain upon her good side, to have her as his ally, stayed his hand.

Her monochromatic fingers gave the Elf’s digits a friendly squeeze, though her eyes were anything but kind when she told the Silvan with a smile promising death, “Don’t worry. I won’t let them burn you like they are doing to my family.”

As oddly reassuring as it was to know Elise was willing to fight for him, for it showed the Prince she truly cared for him in some way, regardless of how she had tricked him into believing she would relieve Estel of the curse upon him, Legolas was beset by the guilt of allowing this slip of a girl – haunt or not – to fight his battles for him. Besides which, while she had killed half of her village for nothing more than to combat her loneliness, Legolas did not want to add to the girl’s count of murders – not on his behalf. _There must be another way,_ he wondered, his mind quickly trying to sort out some manner of ending this standoff before it began. _No one need die for this._

“Just wait a moment,” he begged her. He let his free hand join where hers had hold of his, and he took her small limb between both of his own. By this grasp, he pulled her closer to him, which she allowed, though it went against every instinct of self-preservation the Elf still retained. “See?” he asked her and nodded to where Elladan and Elrohir stood at the front of a half-circle before Kalin, Estel, and Legolas’ body. “Those two are my friends, and they are good at convincing others. Many times they have convinced me to do as they wanted, and I got into a lot of trouble when younger for it,” he said with strained levity and an unnatural smile.

His mild joking worked. Elise was still sheer, toneless save for her scorching eyes, and as frightening as the slaughterhouses of Udûn, but the vapid ire in her face softened until she became more recognizable as the affable, lonely girl with whom the Wood-Elf had been sitting and speaking to this night. She frowned and nodded, and then gave him a fleeting, sad grin, saying, “Will you tell me about it later? About when you were younger?”

He managed to maintain his smile for her, though he was now more sure than ever there would be no later for him. “I will tell you everything you want to know, tithen pen, once Estel is safe.”

Something about his saying this made Elise’s young face become rather old and much too sorrowful for someone so young as she was. Jealousy marred her pretty features, as well, for Elise had wanted for Estel to join them, but she did not want to share her new Silvan friend with anyone, either, which made the Prince fear for his companions’ safety – and Estel most of all, since Elise knew the Wood-Elf was Estel’s lover. Legolas stood behind the haunt and gently, hesitantly placed his arms around her shoulders so that he hugged her from behind. She leant the back of her head against his belly and looked up at him. It was disquieting to be holding her when her eyes glowed with the fiery red of moiling lava. But then, he looked at her hair, which was still in the braids he had plaited into it by the lake earlier, and he recalled the story she had told him of how she came to be this way.

 _She’s just a child,_ he reminded himself, while hoping this was still true. The evil contained in the wood from the box, that which had come from some tomb in the Downs, might have altered Elise’s soul, but her mind – well, the Elf could only try to reassure himself, _She is only a child._

Across the way, everyone was still and quiet, with the men of the village facing Legolas’ companions, all of whom were ready for a fight but seemed not to want to start it without having any other option. Legolas could nearly see the wheels spinning in Elladan’s mind as he strove to find a way to answer Randric without inciting bloodshed. If Randric was put off by the Elf’s continued silence, he gave no indication, but stood there with his wolfish grin growing upon his face. The Silvan felt against his belly when Elise shifted her head towards the barnyard and Legolas followed her gaze to see at what she looked. No more of her family’s bodies had been added to the fire just yet.

Although it had already occurred to the Elf in the back of his mind, it came to the surface now as he realized fully, _Does Elise know her own body is over there, that they will burn it? If she does not stop them, she may be destroyed or cast into the Halls of Awaiting when the splinter is burnt_. He felt awful by not bringing it up to her, but he did not want to lose focus upon saving Estel right now. He would choose Estel over Elise with regret but without qualm. Elise could not find this out or Estel and all of the Prince’s friends would pay.

Elise leant her head back and looked up at him again, while warning the Silvan Prince in the adorable, pure voice she had used while speaking to him earlier by the lake, which only roused the Elf’s trepidation further to hear, “I will wait to see what happens, but I will kill them all to keep you with me.”

An undulation of dark and primal fear rippled through the Elf’s consciousness. He didn’t doubt her in the least; he only prayed Estel and his friends were not among her victims.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Estel had heard Legolas. He believed this with all his being. He thought he had heard Legolas shout something about waiting. To whom he was speaking, Aragorn could only guess, but if he had to hazard said guess, he would say the Wood-Elf was arguing with Elise. Aragorn had no doubt in his mind Legolas was here with him. In fact, he could feel his lover’s anxiety clearly, as he had so many times these past weeks. But now, there was no time and no way to comfort Legolas with a hand pressed to his belly, as the Silvan liked. Still, Aragorn looked around him despite his inability to see the Elf. Behind him, Kalin made some soft, inquisitive noise. When the Ranger glanced at the sentry, he saw how Kalin watched him. Without speaking aloud, he nodded at Kalin, who knew just what the Ranger meant – the sentry’s Prince was here.

_Where are you, Greenleaf?_

Wherever the Wood-Elf was, Aragorn hoped Legolas would stay back from the coming squabble, for the men with torches would scatter the Elf’s faer as easily as they scattered the immediate darkness around them while they sauntered haughtily before the Elves and Rangers. When the villagers began slowly to spread out a bit in a crescent shape mimicking that of Aragorn’s companions, his fellow Watchers and his brothers immediately spread out further, as well, shifting to create a barrier around Legolas’ body in protection of him, while also giving themselves more room for melee without striking each other by accident. Even Wendt, who had nothing to gain from fighting his own kith in the effort to keep the Prince’s rhaw safe, readied his mace and loosened his stance in preparation for an attack. Estel looked back at Kalin again to ascertain if the Silvan was ready – the Wood-Elf was more than ready. Indeed, he looked savagely feral, making the Adan think Kalin would kill every villager in sight to protect his Prince’s body, even though Legolas’ rhaw would soon die without his faer anyway. And in truth, Aragorn was prepared to do the same.

 _Just stay out of it,_ he wanted to call aloud to Legolas, to ensure his Elven lover did not destroy himself in trying to be of aid. It was a useless hope, he discerned, for he knew the Silvan better now than he ever had – better than he knew himself, at times – and so, he did not doubt Legolas would join the fray and do what he could to help his brethren and friends. What the Elf might be able to do to help, Aragorn could not fathom, but it would not stop Legolas from trying. _Please, Greenleaf. Just stay away from the light,_ he pled. The Ranger was not giving up his hope of speaking to the Elf one last time when Estel’s own faer fled his shivering, tired, and soon to be vacant, lifeless body.

Randric’s declaration of demanding to be allowed to burn the Prince remained unopposed for the moment, as no one had yet to take up the gauntlet and thus take up the challenge. Once one of them denied the man the Prince’s body for burning, the lines would be drawn and there would be no turning back. Being the oldest, if only by moments over his twin, Elladan took charge, as was his wont, and he stepped away from the half-circle in which he was part, comprised of which were the Eldar and Rangers.

All the false amicability he had shown Randric and the villagers before was now gone from the Noldo’s face when he pronounced, “You will not burn our friend’s body. He is alive still.”

Randric considered this with his weasel-like smile. “Wendt told us how he is dying, how Elise touched him like she did all the others she killed. He also told us that this one,” he continued, nodding toward where Legolas laid upon the withered grass, unable to fend for himself, “can see Elise. Everyone else died at once, but this one did not. It is sorcery.”

Legolas’ faer hadn’t lingered in his rhaw after being touched by the haunt because of sorcery, of course, but according to Elladan, because of the Silvan being an Elf with a faer not as easily whelmed by the fell magic Elise was affected by herself. Estel could sense how Elrohir and Elladan considered explaining this to Randric and his kith; the twins looked between themselves for the opinion of each other, but their hesitation was seen as collusion by Randric, and he continued in his blustery tirade.

The farmer first scratched at his bare scalp and then crossed his arms over his chest and claimed, “If he is not burnt up, the foul magic keeping Elise here will remain, and we won’t let this sickness spread any further. It must all be burnt,” Randric affirmed, coming a step closer to Elladan to challenge the Noldo’s authority. Had the farmer any sense at all, he would have realized Elladan could cut him down with his dagger or sword, or even with his bare hands, before Randric or any of the dregs of this village could react. He was lucky Elladan did not yet want to begin the violence; else, Randric would have been the first to fall.

Randric had not mentioned whether Wendt told his kith that Estel had been touched, as well; the Adan could only assume if the blacksmith had, Randric would be calling for Aragorn’s death or for his living body to burn, also.

In the time it took for Estel to blink, his quick and sharp mind assessed the situation from the mindset of the warrior he was. Overhead, a long stretch of dark clouds slid over Ithil, blocking all natural light from the field where they stood in confrontation. The Eldar needed little light by which to see and although the menfolk didn’t realize it, their torches were unwieldy and once extinguished, the sudden dark would blind the men because they had become accustomed to the illumination. Only a few carried weapons of any use, and those who did held them as if they were about to hoe a field rather than cut a man’s throat. In his heightened state of combat readiness, Estel could smell the fear wafting off the men; moreover, he could smell some kind of brew, like cider or ale, and so decided some of the men had been drinking when they were conscripted into this mob. Their slow wits and even slower reflexes were another advantage for Aragorn and his group. The only disadvantages Estel could truly find were that they were outnumbered and reluctant to kill these men; however, the worst disadvantage was they were not just fighting – they were trying to protect Legolas’ inert body. All it would take was one of the villagers to slip past the guarding ring of Noldor and Rangers and slide a dagger into Legolas’ chest. All this assessing took only a moment; Aragorn steeled himself for the bloodshed. Despite not wanting to kill the villagers, he would do it without regret if they attacked.

Not intimidated in the least by the man’s posturing and stepping forward until he and Randric were nearly nose-to-nose, Elladan’s voice was a lethal whisper as he told the farmer, “And I say again, our friend is not dead. We will not hand over his living body to be incinerated. Deal with your own kith, and we will handle ours after we have left you to your own devices.”

The menfolk shifted around in agitation behind Randric. They held their torches, their gardening tools, and some had small daggers in hand – the kind one would keep on his belt for small tasks such as peeling an apple or cutting thread. Randric held up a hand and motioned with it once by curling his fingers towards Elladan, and as one, the villagers advanced upon the Elves and Rangers, all of them taking a few steps closer but none yet daring to interact with one of the warriors before them.

As fearless as he tried to be, Randric found it hard to stand before Elladan’s quiet rage. Even when not incensed as the Noldo was currently, Elladan’s gaze – as was the regard of the Eldar in general – was hard for many mortals to meet, for within the depths of an Elf’s bottomless eyes laid knowledge and experience the likes of which no man could hope to live long enough to achieve. Aragorn had been on the receiving end of the verdigris, incisive, haunting stare of an enraged Elladan before, and so grudgingly admired Randric’s valiant attempt not to back away from the Noldo. Yet, the farmer could not look directly at Elladan when he spoke next.

“We are not taking no for an answer, Elf,” Randric replied to Elladan, saying the word “Elf” as if he were speaking an expletive. “We will see this sickness eradicated, along with everyone who carries it, and if you get in our way, we will remove you.”

Having been standing to the side of his twin and fighting his own internal battle not to bash in Randric’s head when the farmer began threatening Elladan, Elrohir now stepped forward to be beside his brother. “Do you speak for all these men? Do you speak for your fellow villagers, who will pay the price for your treachery, also? Do you realize what retribution will come from us and our kin should you try to follow through on your threat? Take care what you start, Master Human, lest you not like how it ends.”

The stooped over farmer made a grand show of harrumphing at Elrohir’s pointed questioning. He then spun on heel and shook his head at his fellow menfolk, all of whom watched this but did not participate. They had only one role in this travesty – to die fighting a cause none of them believed in, but all of whom were too caught up in the moment to realize the folly of their commitment. When he spun back around to the twins, Randric harrumphed again and smiled widely. “Retribution? You are outnumbered, Elfling,” he called Elrohir. “When this is done, the village will thank us for ending the plight this abomination brought upon us,” he claimed, pointing at Legolas as he said this.

Hearing the man call Elrohir an Elfling incensed Elladan more than Elrohir, but both twins were quickly losing hold of their tempers upon hearing the Adan call Legolas an abomination. Before they could argue or persuade the man any further to drop this foolhardy cause, Randric went on, continuing his outburst and now including Estel in it, accusing Aragorn vaguely, “My sister Renetta told me all about you two. Said she overheard how you and that degenerate,” he said, pointing at Legolas again, “were at the lake near this very farm. Stayed there for weeks, you did, but you arrived at the lake just when all this started. You brought this with you.”

As determined as he was to stay out of the verbal argument, the man’s constant belittlement of Legolas was wearing thin Aragorn’s already depleted patience. He began to argue, “We knew nothing of your village or its troubles while at the lake – ”

Randric waved his hand to wave off this excuse, then told Estel, “Renetta told me she got up to use the privy and heard you and your Elf slut behind the bookshelves in the school. Thought it was sweet, she said. But her story turned my stomach and I wanted to gut you both. Its unnatural and repulsive,” Randric hissed and then spat on the ground to his side with no lack of true and honest disgust, which he directed at Aragorn and the Prince lying on the ground behind him. “The Creator cast this curse upon you two for your sordid proclivities, and you brought it here and infected our good village with it.”

The Noldor, Rangers, Wendt, and Kalin were somewhat baffled by Randric’s abrupt change in the course of his rant, for none of them could quite grasp what the man was furious about now. Estel recognized just what Randric spoke of, however. Renetta, the woman whose small child had slept in Estel’s lap while he sat in the rocking chair in front of the fire, had told her crazed brother she had heard Aragorn and Legolas’ lovemaking during the night. While she had said it was sweet, Randric thought it was perverse and wicked. And since Randric had walked with Legolas and Aragorn on their way to the village when meeting Jakob on the road, the farmer had heard enough of their story to have the details to connect the events in the village to Estel and Legolas’ stay at the lake and their arrival in the settlement; furthermore, having learnt the Elf and Ranger were lovers, and because he was offended by it, Randric blamed Aragorn and Legolas for Elise’s curse, as if it were some punishment from Eru for their having the gall to be in love and for their having made love near and in the Edain’s village.

 _He’s insane,_ Aragorn pondered in spellbound bewilderment of the depths to which Randric’s mad logic had led him – and thus led the other rabbles of the village, who listened now with rapt attention to Randric’s justification for their actions this night. Of course, Estel had known that beyond the safety of the lands of the Eldar – such as in Imladris, where love between two males was not very common but not considered an abomination or disgusting – the Edain of Middle Earth were not accepting of romantic love between two men. But to be faced with it now, with Legolas etiolated and withered in the dry, rustling grass at Estel’s feet, the Prince’s faer loose from his dying rhaw because he had tried to help these villagers, arose in Aragorn a despair he had not felt since first he considered how Thranduil might react to his and Legolas’ love. Thranduil might once have agreed with these men, in fact, though he had changed his opinion. There was no time to change Randric’s opinion, nor did Estel want to. He wanted to bury his fist in the man’s face for both calling Legolas a slut and for implying what he and the Silvan felt for each other was unnatural and revolting.

 _There is no arguing against him. There is no talking our way out of this fight,_ the Ranger realized just then. He had held some small sliver of hope for this to end peacefully, but now, Aragorn wanted to lop off Randric’s head himself. _I will slit him open from his cock to his chin,_ the Ranger decided, liking the idea of it, ere stepping forward to do just that. The twins simultaneously put their hands upon the hilts of their swords and loosened their stance as if about to attack, for they realized the man was beyond reason, as well.

Regardless of whether Kalin understood all of what Randric meant or not, Kalin had heard Randric call his Prince an ‘Elf slut’ as well, and to the sentry, that was enough incentive for Kalin to slice the man’s belly open, pull out his innards, and hang the man using his own guts as the noose. But Kalin was thinking more clearly than was Estel at the moment, and before Aragorn could walk more than two steps forward, the sentry halted the Ranger with a hand upon the back of his cloak. He tugged at the impediment, wishing to get to Randric before anyone else could. But Kalin would not release him. When he turned to glare at the Silvan, Kalin had merely to look down at his dying Prince for Aragorn to be reminded – he needed to remain by Legolas’ side to protect his body. Insults would not kill Legolas, after all, though a dagger might if Aragorn wasn’t tempering his choler and paying attention.

Having been standing listlessly and uselessly, Wendt now hefted his mace in hand, which he then held out in front of him in readiness for his kith to attack, though he called out to Randric and the others, “Stop this. You’re speaking nonsense. The Creator does not punish the innocent masses for the sins of the few, though you know I disagree with your idea of what is _sinful_ ,” the blacksmith argued, his weary tone of voice making it apparent that he had dealt with this kind of persecution from his fellow villagers before. “You have my family’s bodies to burn, already. This Elf is not dead. Do not threaten these Elves nor the Rangers over the matter, lest with your madness you lose your lives. Let them care for their own.”

“Quiet, Wendt. It’s your family, your niece, who murdered half our village. Don’t get highhanded with me,” Randric sneered, moving a bit away from Elladan so he could look at Wendt as he taunted him. “Besides, we all know where you like to stick your prick, and it ain’t in no cunny. You’re part of the problem. Perversion such as yours and these two abhorrent heretics needs to be punished, and none of you are walking away from here without paying for the tribulations you’ve brought to our village.”

Now was not the time for a discussion with Randric about his backward and hateful views. More importantly, the villagers behind Randric were eating up Randric’s prurient tale of perversion being the source of the imprecation with all the savor of a starving man eating freshly baked bread. The men were whispering to themselves and each other, their indolence of before becoming more fervent as they allowed Randric’s hatred to incite them, to rouse them, and to become their own.

“Do not do this, Master Human,” Elladan tried a final time. In a flash of polished metal, the Noldo pulled his sword free and held it out in front of him, his movement so quick that to the villagers in front of him, he might as well have performed some magic trick. With Randric standing so close, the sword could easily have been buried inside the Adan’s chest or slit his throat. Randric realized this and quickly staggered back, though had Elladan wanted to kill him, Randric’s attempt to get away would have been too late. The elder Noldo firmly told the farmer, “You will not have Legolas’ body, no matter your pugnacious thoughts on his actions. He is not dead.”

“We could remedy that for the slut easily enough,” Randric threatened, his voice trembling from the knowledge of having nearly been cut in half by Elladan, and his words riling Estel and his companions evermore with the callousness with which he spoke of Legolas. In what he hoped to be contempt, though his shakiness weathered it, Randric shrugged and allowed, “We’ll talk it over.”

Randric snorted in mirthless laughter and then bravely but unwisely turned his back upon Elladan to walk the short distance to a couple of men in the back of the group, to whom he spoke in whispers. The other menfolk stood their ground; they no longer appeared languid and unmotivated, but ready to begin the fight their leader had begun. Elladan, Elrohir, Reana, Halbarad, and Jakob all stood their ground with none of them speaking and all of them staring at the villagers facing off before them. Wendt remained just behind the Noldor, just as ready as were the others. They would not be taken by surprise – this much was for certain. Aragorn wished he could confer with his brothers, to tell them Legolas was here and may get involved, but since they did not seem to believe him anyway, he kept to himself.

No; there was no point in trying to explain to these men how Legolas’ faer was gone while his rhaw lived on. They wouldn’t care. There was no point in trying to change how these men viewed the love between the Elf and Ranger, either, for their hatefulness about it was deep-set and superstitious. And now, since Randric seemed intent on killing Legolas and then burning him, just to prevent the spread of the curse, Aragorn knew there was no more time for discussion. They would have to fight to protect Legolas and each other. Frantic and racing, Estel’s mind flitted from attention to his surroundings to trying to overhear what Randric said to his kith and then to what Legolas had earlier told Kalin. Truthfully, being that he thought burning Elise might not be such a bad idea, he wished the villagers would go ahead and get it done, just in case it had some positive effect upon the Prince. In fact, the more he tried to reason out why Legolas had warned them of the box and of _a splinter,_ the more Aragorn considered how the box itself – cracked and falling apart – had been the means of Elise’s thrall to this imprecation.

 _But in what way?_ he wondered. When his Greenleaf told Kalin to beware the box and the splinter, he might have meant for them not to be gouged by a splinter from it, for it might cause some ill effect upon them. And once thinking this, Estel’s mind naturally led him to the conclusion he felt he should have drawn hours ago, _Perhaps Elise was gouged by a splinter._ _And if any part of that box still exists, especially if it is in her corpse’s flesh, then it must be destroyed._

Even as he thought this, the Ranger rued not having considered more closely Legolas’ warning about the splinter, for if he had come to the same conclusion hours earlier, perhaps the Elf’s life could have been saved. If nothing else, they could have had this business concluded before the menfolk of the village showed up, and thus been on their way to safety and not now faced with this danger.

Besides, and more worryingly than even the threat of the men afore them, was how Estel could feel Legolas’ presence. The Elf was close, he knew, and wished his Greenleaf would speak again so he could hear the Wood-Elf’s voice. It soothed his aching heart to feel his lover’s manifestation, since until just a short while ago, the Prince’s presence had been missing, and the Ranger had feared the Silvan might be gone for good; but now, he feared for the Elf’s faer. The torches some of the men held would soon burn out if the cloth and oil upon them was spent, at least. Even should they manage to suss out this business of the splinter and perchance destroy it, Aragorn was terrified to think it would definitely be too late for Legolas, even if perhaps Estel himself could be saved by this.

His body was a continuous, shuddering, aching, straining, and nerve wracked mess. Estel could not imagine he would live much longer. If he were to die, then he hoped he had the chance to put his broadsword through Randric’s chest first, for causing this travesty, but mostly, for calling Legolas an abomination and a slut, for denouncing Estel’s love for the Elf as depraved, and for threatening his lover’s life, meager as it was.

_Is Legolas watching all this? Does he know these men wish to burn his body alive? Greenleaf is only in this sorry state because he agreed when Halbarad told him he was the only one who could save the villagers, since he was the only one who could see Elise. And to repay his having given his soul to protect them, they wish to kill him and burn his body. They would sacrifice him like the proverbial lamb, all to appease their mob-generated madness._

Aragorn noted Randric still spoke in murmurs to his cohorts. He figured his brothers and Reana could hear what was said, but doubted he would have the chance to inquire. So instead, he cast his gaze around behind him in search of the Prince, fruitless thought it was. Kalin saw what the Ranger was doing and once again wordlessly asked the man about it, this time by catching Estel’s eye and giving one brow a slight lift.

“I still feel Greenleaf,” he whispered. “He is here, I know it. I think I heard him speak earlier. He will try to do something to stop this, to aid us,” he fretted aloud to the sentry.

Kalin instantly became more anxious. He strode a single step forward to Estel, and said aloud what the Ranger had been vexing over since first feeling his lover’s return, “The torches the men carry. If he comes close to them…”

The rank smell of burning, rotting flesh drifted on the wind, overpowering the already overwhelming stench of smoke from the now gutted and smoldering remnants of the barn and house. At the bonfire in the barnyard, the men who had remained there to incinerate the bodies had finally built the flagging fire back up, and thus far, they had only managed to throw the infant and Emler’s bodies into the flames. But as Aragorn watched, two of the men picked up the woman’s body – Elise’s mother’s body – and chucked it like a log into the bonfire.

Randric’s conference was done, it seemed, for he laughed viciously and called out from behind the rest of the menfolk, “I guess we will have to make you see things our way.”

As if merely waiting for the cue to begin, one lone man – no older than twenty with the marks of pimples still upon his forehead, hidden under the long, greasy, black hair hanging lank around his chubby face – ran towards Elladan, his torch outthrust. He must have hoped to take Elladan off his guard. The elder twin didn’t even move until the villager was nearly upon him, giving the poor man the illusion of the advantage of surprise. But at the last moment, just when the torch was near to Elladan’s torso, the Noldo’s sword arm shot out, knocked the man’s arm to the side, which caused his whole body to stagger off to the side, as well; as the villager stumbled bent over at the waist, Elladan brought his sword’s hilt down upon the villager’s head, the thwack of the blow audible to all standing around them. The villager dropped to the grass like a ragdoll, alive but sure to have a massive headache when he awoke.

 _I guess we will try not to kill them,_ Estel determined, looking around him for Legolas a final time ere he turned his full consideration back to the imminent fight. _Unless necessary. Except Randric. That one is fair game._

Aragorn took a split second to look to Kalin, hoping the sentry would stay beside Legolas no matter what, for the Ranger believed the men would try to reach the prone Wood-Elf and kill him rather than try to defeat the Elves and Rangers beforehand. The men likely thought once Legolas was dead, the Eldar and Rangers would not be as willing to fight; they were wrong in this, for if any harm came to Legolas – or any one of their group, for that matter – they would slaughter these men without second thought.

An unnatural quiet came over the menfolk, who were enraged at the treatment of their friend, despite his having attacked the Elf first. The villagers let out various roars and battle cries and began running towards the Rangers and Eldar, their visages all desperate and mindless with no intelligence and mere rage showing upon them.

 _They will not have you,_ he promised the Prince and lifted his broadsword as the villagers came at him.


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what's a good way of procrastinating editing this story? Writing another chapter. D'oh! So here's another one. I really should stop and edit it but... nah. :D
> 
> Also, I don't typically do "Trigger Warnings" or that kind of thing, since if you are reading my stories you already know they can be dark, but just in this case, **I want to give a warning for some homophobic/bigoted language in this chapter.**
> 
> Enjoy.

When during their walk to the village Legolas and Estel had come across Jakob on the road, the Silvan had thought it best to hide his love for Estel while amongst the villagers, for he had dreaded the Edain here would react as so many Edain did when faced with something they did not understand – that is, with fear. Since learning of his and Aragorn’s imminent demises, Legolas had forsaken his intent to withhold his affection for Estel because he had worried with both of their time so short, he might not have much longer to demonstrate his love for the man. And now, Legolas wished with all his being that he had done as he had originally planned.

Legolas would never be ashamed of his love for Estel, nor want for Estel ever to be ashamed of his love for the Prince, but their incaution had attracted the disgust and bigotry of these men, all of whom now blamed the Elf and Ranger for the ills having befallen their settlement – mostly because Legolas and Estel were lovers and easy targets upon which Randric could lay blame, but Randric also played upon his fellow Edain’s wariness of the Eldar in general, who were often blamed by the Edain of Middle Earth for events of a catastrophic or supposedly supernatural sort. The Firstborn were usually reclusive and enigmatic to the Aftercomers, and thus the focus of superstitious beliefs. Likewise, Randric and his friends believed Legolas to be under some sorcerous spell that might spread to them – which was true – except burning the Silvan’s body would do nothing to stop it and only eventuate in the men’s deaths by the Rangers and Elves’ hands.

It was the kind of situation where Legolas wished his father or Minyatar were here, for Thranduil or Elrond could allay the villagers’ anger and suspicions with a few well-crafted sentences, or dampen their mounting, raging, and misplaced ire by the sheer force of their intimidating presences. But wishing for aid to arrive would not help Estel and the others; Legolas forced all thoughts of this sort from his wandering mind and tried to focus on what to do.

 _They won’t stop with just burning my body._ These men were the lowlives and bottom feeders of the village, Legolas was sure of it, and while perhaps he and Estel would not have needed to worry about this kind of prejudice from the other villagers, the rest of the settlement was not here right now – only these dregs. The laegel deplored of the menfolk’s attitude, _They will want to kill Estel because they think he is fouled by being my lover._

Legolas watched events unfold before him and listened to Randric’s vile accusations. Aragorn was in peril because the Wood-Elf had not been able to keep his hands to himself in the schoolhouse; the Prince’s heart ached for it. It was his fault. He’d been foolish enough to get touched by Elise to begin; had his own soul not been sapped by Elise, he could have continually given Estel the light of his Elven faer and it would have lasted much longer, thus perchance allowing the Ranger the time to travel to Imladris to seek Elrond’s aid. Had not Legolas been so set upon leaving the lake, or if he had only been quicker in removing Aragorn from Elise’s way when the girl touched the man, or –

Fiercely, the Elf shook his ephemeral head to clear it of these useless, exhausting, and guilt-ridden ramblings. He did so just in time to see as a man ran towards Elladan. The Noldo felled him with a single wallop to the head. And after this, there was no turning back. The men let loose battle cries and grunts of exertion as they made their move to attack, and of course, none of Legolas’ remorse counted a whit when the menfolk began their assault.

His immediate reaction was to join the fray, to fight with his friends, and to protect them. It mattered not at all that he had no body with which to fight. Legolas did not consider whether he would last beyond reaching the first ring of illumination cast by the villagers’ lit torches. He cared not how he had no weapon, much less an actual hand in which to hold one. _Estel,_ his mind supplied, followed by the fleeting and half-conscious repetition of each of his friends’ names. The names ran through his thoughts, _Elrohir, Elladan. Reana. Wendt. Halbarad, Jakob, and Kalin,_ came to his harried mind as he looked at each in turn.

The men were upon his companions, hesitant in how to attack the Rangers and Eldar, but not unwilling. Legolas could stand and watch this no more than could his friends stand and watch the menfolk of the village take the Prince’s body to the fire for incineration. The seasoned Noldorin twins whom he loved as brothers, the Elleth who was highly experienced in combat, the Rangers who could handle themselves well enough, the blacksmith who was as brawny as he was brave, and his human lover who truly needed no protection – all of them were capable without Legolas, but the Wood-Elf had always loved his friends and family more than he loved himself, and he would die to keep a single one of them from receiving a lone scratch.

Yet, Legolas was already dead, and having forgotten this, he released his light embrace of the haunt in front of him and slipped around her, then began forward to thwart the man who had slid between Elladan and Halbarad to reach Estel. The villager was bouncing on his heels, feinting left and right in a vain attempt to catch Aragorn off his guard, with his shovel outthrust and wavering because the implement was not balanced as a good bludgeon ought to be and the man was unused to wielding such a tool as a weapon; meanwhile, the experienced Ranger merely stood still, his broadsword at ready and his stance perfectly defensive as he waited for the prime opportunity to foil the man’s confrontation.

Legolas got no more than Elise’s arm’s length away before the girl grabbed the sleeve of his illusory tunic and chastised him sharply, “No! The torches! Stay back.”

He stopped as she asked, though not of his own volition. By the creek two nights ago, Elise had taken partial control of the Elf’s mind; she did this now in her fervent effort to keep Legolas from destroying his faer in the foolish attempt to enter the skirmish. Having suffered before the sensation of being out of his own control, the Elf’s mind balked at the intrusion and fought against it instinctively, even though he saw sense in what she said. Feeling the Wood-Elf’s struggle, Elise fisted her hand in his sleeve and contained his will evermore with her own, until without the muscles to struggle against both her physical and mental hold over him, Legolas could only watch in horrified helplessness as the fight unfolded. The villagers in the barnyard, who had been in the process of picking up Galeb’s body to cast into the bonfire, saw and heard the battle cries of their kith, and so tossed the girl’s father’s body quickly into the fire, picked up their torches, set them alight, and then ran to be of aid to their friends. Elise did not release Legolas – not his mind nor his incorporeal form – but she did come forward to stand beside him.

“Estel will die anyway,” she infuriatingly explained to the Elf, her voice patient but questioning, as if she truly did not understand why Legolas would risk his destruction to save Estel’s life. Gently, the tangling, strangling vines of her power over him withdrew from his mind until the Prince could move again, although he did not just yet. “If he dies now, it just means you will see him sooner,” she tried to soothe Legolas, her voice out of place in its merry optimism.

The laegel could think of no response to give the child without his venting upon her the wrath he felt for her overpowering of his strength of will, nor the outrage he felt to hear her imply he ought to be happy over how soon his lover would be dead. Perhaps he could have pulled free from her unnaturally strong hold of his tunic, but Legolas remained standing as he was, his horror rending him silent and still to observe the altercation. It wasn’t often he was a mere observer to a battle, rather than being part of it.

Because of the formation the Elves and Ranger had made, the men of the village were forced to attack only one or two at a time, rather than all at once, for there was no room for melee should they do so. With the honed edge of his heavy broadsword, Aragorn deflected a villager’s swing of his shovel, which halved the wooden handle of the farm implement only a few inches from the villager’s hand. In surprise, the villager stumbled back, disarmed completely and now unwilling to attack Aragorn with nothing more than a stump of wood. Beside his Prince’s head, Kalin stood with his bow in hand, arrows flying from the string rapidly in a blur of brightly colored vanes and twanging of the bowstring. The Wood-Elf would not chance hitting one of the Noldor or Rangers, and so deterred only those villagers who were safe, clear shots. Of the thirty or so men who were surrounding his friends, ten were taken down by Kalin with his arrows finding their thighs or arms – none of these hits were likely to be fatal if they were treated soon and the bleeding stopped, but all of them disabled the villagers enough to send them staggering to the back of the pack of menfolk to regroup, or to fall in pain to the grass, where they grasped at the arrows in their flesh and called out for aid, though there was none to be had. The nearest healers were currently on the other side of this altercation, and even the village’s healer, Liandra, had taken off into the copse for safety, as she could not be certain her own kith wouldn’t turn against her. Having picked off as many as he could, Kalin tossed his bow aside and focused upon those who were trying to sneak their way past the others to reach his Prince.

Legolas was not aware of the soft whine of fear emanating from deep within his throat when he saw how one of the villagers swung his short sword at an unsuspecting Elrohir’s head, for the twin was distracted while deflecting the blows of two torches held by two adamant villagers in front of him, and thus did not see the man behind him. Taking her duty as protector of her Lord’s sons as seriously as Kalin did his duty to protect his Prince, Reana used her own flesh to stop the torch, the wooden length striking her forearm harshly, though luckily the wood where it hit her was not the oiled end and thus not alight. She pushed with her arm and caused the torch to fall to the ground, ere she then used her sword to run a shallow but highly painful cut up the outside of the villager’s thigh. He cried out and held his hands out in surrender – not that Reana planned to kill him, though from her face, it was clear to Legolas she wished to do so for his attack upon Elrohir. And besides, the menfolk were not yet aware of how their opponents were not keen upon slaughtering them. By then, Elrohir had disarmed both villagers in front of him, knocked one of them flat on his ass and the other one flat out, and turned in time to give Reana a flashing smile of thanks ere he looked for the next aggressor to come his way.

Even Wendt was set upon not slaughtering his kith, for though his wooden mace was well made, heavy, and his arms thick with muscle from swinging his hammer against iron all day at his forge, the blacksmith aimed for his fellow villagers’ legs and arms, where he might break a few bones but not smash open any heads or do fatal damage to the Edain’s organs. Halbarad and Jakob fared just as well, to the Prince’s relief, and in fact, fewer of the villagers were setting upon the two Rangers with any truly malicious intent. The villagers knew Halbarad and Jakob well from their frequent visits to the settlement; they respected these two Rangers far more than they did the Elves or Estel, being that they believed Estel to be the harbinger of their trouble and the Elves to be prolonging it. Instead, those villagers who came at Jakob and Halbarad were thrusting their weapons half-heartedly in an obvious attempt to keep the two men occupied but unharmed. And the two Rangers were parrying the blows easily, tirelessly, while also maintaining the flank of their half-circle so none could slip around to get to those behind.

Legolas nearly forgot himself by trying to sprint forward again when his gaze turned to Elladan. The elder Noldo was the only one thus far who had incapacitated anyone in what might prove to be a fatal injury, and then only because the man fell forward further onto the twin’s blade despite the Noldo’s attempt to push him back before the blade pierced his stomach through entirely. The Prince saw the regret upon Elladan’s otherwise hardened visage, and in fact, when Elladan carefully pulled his sword free of the man to avoid more injury to him, the twin faltered in indecision as to whether to aid the villager with his wound or cleave his head off for trying to kill him. This vacillation almost cost Elladan, for another man who had seen the damage done to one of his companions ran at the Noldo. This one had an actual weapon, even if it was only an iron-tipped spike used to aerate the soil of a garden, and might have run Elladan through, had not Reana once more came to one of her Lord’s son’s aid and shoved at the man by ramming her shoulder into his side as he tried to pass her. The villager fumbled to his knees just beside his fallen friend. When the man looked up to find Elladan’s sword leveled at his neck, he dropped his spike, grabbed for his fellow villager, and with Elladan’s nod of merciful sanction, he pulled his friend out of the skirmish and into the relative safety of the other injured at the back of the group of men.

Not a single blow had been landed upon any Ranger or Elf, nor upon Wendt, and this drove Randric further into madness. Up until now, the stooped over farmer had been calling out encouragement and instruction from the cowardly area at the back of the group, beyond even the injured; Randric held a short sword, at least, and he now seemed prepared to use it, for he strode past some of his brethren and to the forefront, shoving more than one man along his way, though he took care to shove them towards the fighting rather than just out of his path. And yet, Randric stopped before coming too close. He began twirling his short sword around in a flashy, albeit useless fashion, which evinced he had some skill with a blade; still, for all his bravado, Randric could not possibly hope to best one of the Rangers or Elves in a fight.

A lull in the clanging and banging of the men and Elves’ weapons occurred when Randric called a temporary halt to the fighting, saying as though half his number were not injured, disarmed, or falling back upon realizing how poor of an idea all this was. He shouted, “Enough! Let us end this.”

“I agree,” Elrohir called out in response. While the village’s Edain were sweating and huffing with exertion, the Noldor and Kalin were as pristine and unaffected as before they had begun, and Elrohir underscored this by indolently, impertinently flicking a loose twig from off the tunic at his shoulder ere he straightened the tunic itself to lie properly over his broad chest. Legolas’ companions reformed their crescent shaped formation around the Prince’s prone body while the villagers fell back a bit to reorganize and rethink their strategy. Elrohir continued in farcical conciliation, “Yes, let us end this. You go to your homes, and we will go to ours, and we will all pretend this never happened.”

The hand in Legolas’ sleeve loosened until Elise took hold of his fingers, instead. Seeing Aragorn was safe for the moment and the rest of his friends were faring well, Legolas spared a moment to look down at Elise. She was smiling and her fiery eyes were wide with exhilaration. The girl likely had never seen a battle of this sort before, small though it was, and since she was safe from harm, the girl was having a wonderful time watching it happen. Moreover, she seemed highly amused by Elrohir’s tauntingly sarcastic suggestion, for she giggled and whispered to Legolas, “He’s funny.”

Absently nodding his agreement, Legolas entwined his fingers with hers, turned his attention back to the others, and listened when Randric laughed with true merriment at Elrohir’s acerbity. Apparently, Randric was just as excited as was Elise to be watching the bout, and since he had  yet to join his brethren in it, the farmer was able to do so without having come to harm, either. While still staying behind a few of the more able-bodied and uninjured members of his party, Randric ambled ever closer until he stood before Elladan and Elrohir again as he had before giving the signal to his kith to attack a short while ago.

In what might have been a dazzling smile had Randric not the gleam of madness in his dark eyes – madness brought about because of his zealous belief in the justness of what he was perpetrating – the farmer suggested in a mockingly wheedling voice, “Come on. Just give us the Elf’s body. There’s no need for all of this.”

Elladan and Elrohir stood side by side yet again, though they would spread back out if the men came at them another time, and to Legolas, his identical friends looked gloriously dangerous. Always the one who was more outgoing, jovial, and emotional, Elrohir put on a show of bending down to gather a handful of dry grass to wipe the rubicund, glistening blood from off his glinting blade. Elladan, on the other hand, had always been quieter, sterner, and more stoic than was his brother, and so merely stood stock-still as he rejoindered without the mendacious joviality his twin or Randric were displaying, “You are right. There is no need for it. So far, we have countered your every attempt to harm us without needing to kill you, but if you press us further, or one of my friends is hurt, the rules of this game you play will change, and we will take you all down one by one.”

“Do not tempt fate,” Wendt tried to add. He and Reana were once more as they had been when all this began; that is, standing just off to either side and behind the twin Noldor. “Listen to these good Elves. You are keeping them from doing the very thing you wish to do – ending Elise’s terrorization of our village. Please, my friend. I have known you since we were both children, as I have known all of you our whole lives,” the blacksmith pled first to Randric and then to the other villagers who listened to Wendt with confounded silence. “It is not too late to stop this and work together.”

All this gave Randric pause, Legolas could tell, though what it was Elladan or Wendt had said to elicit this response from the farmer was unclear. Perhaps Randric had thought his kith had yet to sustain serious injury or be killed because he had thought they were more capable than they truly were, and now, to hear that none of his people had been killed because his opponents were purposefully trying not to kill them – well, Randric must have realized the Elves and Rangers were exerting little effort to defend themselves while half his own people were already incapable of fighting. Perhaps also, Randric wondered what the Eldar might be capable of doing to end Elise’s reign of terror that he and his kith could not do themselves. He must be wondering if Wendt spoke truly. His quiet contemplation worked against him, though, and when Randric looked at the menfolk who had joined him in this impulsive mission, he saw how they were questioning him and his leadership. To regain control over them, Randric laughed loudly, brashly, and once again began brandishing his short sword in an ostentatious spectacle. Randric’s hairless, sweat shined scalp glowed a sickly orange from the brilliance of the torches his people carried.

“Cocksucker,” he named Wendt, who flinched but did not seem surprised to be called this. “That’s what you are. That’s what they are. Nothing but immoral cocksuckers. Disgusting, depraved, and deserving of death,” he inveighed of Estel and Legolas, with the former bristling to have his Elven lover spoken of in this way and the latter – his phantom form, that is – mostly wishing Elise were not present to hear this man’s filthy language, but also craving to walk forward and stick his phantasmal hand through Randric’s chest and relieve him of his life, as Elise could do.

Raising his voice and his affected anger along with it, the farmer threw his free hand up in the air and reasoned, “Even if your niece hadn’t murdered so many innocents in our settlement, you ought not be welcome to stay here. As it is, though, you and those two arse buggerers are an affront to all that is good and wholesome. But we accepted you in our village, Wendt, and looked over your taste for cock because you were a good blacksmith. Now, though, you take these interlopers’ side when they’re the ones who brought this curse to your own family, who caused all this carnage. Shame on you for betraying us,” Randric hissed and pointed his short sword at Wendt. “Or maybe you’ve just got a taste for fancy Elf cock now. Did you have your go with the blond slut there or are one of these two giving it to you?” he asked, first pointing with his sword at Legolas, then at the twins.

The farmer’s tactic was working. Legolas watched as the man’s fellow Edain laughed at Wendt’s discomfort, while they began nodding in agreement to every insulting, unreasonable bit of evidence Randric confabulated and spouted. His use of their narrow-mindedness was winning them back to his cause yet again. But the tactic was working on the others, as well. Elladan and Elrohir were unaffected by being included in the man’s allusion to being the object of Wendt’s lust but were beyond incensed to have their two foster brothers insulted like this; Halbarad and Jakob were infuriated to have their Chieftain disparaged in such a way when they knew him to be an honorable and worthy man; and Estel and Kalin were on the verge of charging Randric to end his insult of Legolas. Meanwhile, Wendt did not look to Legolas as if he were ashamed at all, but accustomed to these kinds of insults, which only upset the Woodland Prince on his behalf, as in the short time he’d known Wendt, the blacksmith had been nothing but kind, helpful, and brave. And while perhaps Wendt had expressed interest in Legolas earlier, he had never acted lecherous as Randric intimated.

 _Has Wendt suffered this kind of hatred the whole time he’s lived in this village?_ Legolas wondered while thinking again of how he had taken for granted the safety of being amongst his own kind, who were uncaring whether love occurred between two of the same gender.

Moreover, Randric’s rallying was affecting Elise; beside Legolas, Elise was trembling. It took the Wood-Elf a few moments to notice, but once he did, Legolas loosed his fingers from hers and knelt down to check on the girl. Elise didn’t even look at the Elf when he tried to get her attention, for she was too focused upon Randric. The fiery cerise of her eyes was glowing hotter and brighter than the blazing fire upon which her family’s bodies burnt. _She is upset at how Randric has spoken of her uncle and me, but she is also feeling my own anger and feeding off it, I think._ Legolas would have liked to calm his own infuriation for Randric just to calm the child.

“Elise?” he whispered at her. “Elise, tithen pen, are you well?”

The haunt’s head moved slowly towards him, but her eyes remained upon Randric when she said, “I don’t like how he talks bad about you and Uncle Wendt. He’s mean.”

“Yes, he is, and neither do I, sweetheart,” he admitted but said no more, for at that moment, Randric had felt the tide turn in his favor and began threatening the Elves and Rangers to incite his companions back into the altercation.

“If you won’t hand over the slut’s body, we will just be forced to take it. I’m sure it won’t be the first time he’s been taken,” Randric crudely joked, to which the other villagers snorted their laughter and grumbled their agreement. Turning serious, Randric raised his short sword and lifted it in the air, ere he brought it down in a quick slash, giving the sign to his kith to attack yet again.

With that, one of the younger men ran forward, coming for Estel, which incited the others to pick a target, as well. _I cannot stand here and watch. I must do something._ In a flurry of thrusts and swings, the young man who had decided to take on Estel swung his hoe. What the young man lacked in technical knowledge he more than made up for in fervor; brawnier, more agile, and evincing more hate and disgust for Estel than even Randric had shown, the villager switched up his swing at the last second, Aragorn’s broadsword slid along the haft rather than cleaving it in two, and thus the villager managed to land a glancing blow of the sharp edge of the hoe upon Aragorn’s cheek. At once, blood welled in a line along the protrusion of Estel’s high cheekbone.

 _That is enough,_ he told himself. Without Elise holding onto him any longer and her influence absent from his mind, Legolas was finished watching.

“I’m sorry,” he told the Adan child as he rose to his feet to sprint to Estel. Already, Aragorn had gone on the offensive and used his broadsword to slash the villager’s lower leg. Legolas thought the Ranger might have cut the tendon at the man’s heel, for the young man crumpled at once and howled in pain, holding the back of his foot while dropping his hoe without second thought. Had this been a true battle, Aragorn could have slit his throat because of the man’s rash and stupid decision to drop his weapon. Even with Estel safe for the nonce, Legolas could bear to wait no longer, and told Elise, “I do not care if the light ends me. I must help Estel. I must help my friends.”

“But you promised!” she replied at once, her voice growing shrill as her desperation mounted. Quick as lightning, Elise seized hold of the back of Legolas’ tunic, hauling the Wood-Elf to a halt, much to his aggravation. “You promised to stay with me!”

“And you promised to release Estel from the curse you put upon him, but broke your promise,” he whirled around to remind her, and though he did not say this with rancor but disappointment, the girl looked at him as if Legolas had struck her. She inhaled a sobbing breath before letting loose a keening wail that broke the Elf’s heart to hear, while releasing her hold of his tunic and placing both hands over her face as if to hide from his judgmental view. “I am sorry,” he told her honestly, if grudgingly, for it was hard for him to feel sorry when he spoke the truth.

He began away again, unsure of what he might do to help, but his mind racing with ideas he considered and then cast aside, one by one. And yet, again, Elise stopped him, this time by grabbing his hand. Before he could pull free of her vise-like grip, she was abruptly standing in front of him, rather than behind, having moved in the effortless way in which she had to get them to the lake and then back here. She pushed the Wood-Elf roughly, causing Legolas to stumble backwards, though in truth, since his feet did not exist, they did not move.

“Elise,” he wanted to warn her, his mind now trying to find some means of explaining to her why he wanted for Estel to live, even if it meant he would still die later from her imprecation upon him. He also did not want for the haunt to use her overpowering willpower to take him over again, lest he be stuck motionless while potentially watching one of his companions die. “Please, just – ”

Before he could think of a way to explain or even finish his plea, though, the child shook her head at him sternly and interrupted to promise, “Just stay here, I will help them. I told you,” she reminded the Elf, “I will not let them hurt you. And I won’t let them take you away.”

Her little face set with grim determination, Elise disappeared from in front of Legolas, only to reappear behind another man who had decided to take on the Chieftain and so was swinging his torch at Aragorn’s head. It was evident the Noldor, Rangers, and Kalin still did not want to kill the menfolk of the settlement, else they would have already dispatched several of them, rather than merely deflecting their attempts to land blows, but the villagers were no longer holding back, or so it seemed to the Wood-Elf. In fact, even Jakob and Halbarad, who had before not endured the same effort from the villagers in the attacks made upon them, were now under a more vicious onslaught.

 _What is she doing?_ he asked himself. But Legolas knew just what Elise would do, even if in his heart he yearned for this not to be happening – for it not to be _necessary_ for it to be happening. _Just please,_ he prayed to any higher being willing to listen to him, _do not let her touch one of my own by mistake._

Estel would have had no trouble removing the man from in front of him had he the notion merely to kill him, but being that he was trying to disable the villager without taking his life, Aragorn was having some difficulty. The man, who was nearly as old as Liandra but just as spry, swept out the torch he held at Aragorn’s face and then jabbed it at his midsection. All this was at close quarters, which made it hard for Aragorn to deflect using his long broadsword. Moreover, Estel was tiring. Normally, the Ranger would never have fatigued so soon in a battle. With Elise’s curse upon him, Aragorn’s sturdy frame shook with the shuddering force of his soul’s absconding from his body, while his rhaw grew evermore exhausted from both wracking shivers and the decline of his faer’s vitality. It wouldn’t be long ere Estel could fight no more; then, the twins and others would be forced to protect both Legolas and Aragorn, should the confrontation not have ended before then.

Yet, before the villager could make another attempt to scorch Aragorn’s exposed skin or set his clothes afire, Elise reached out and touched the elder in the back; at once, he fell to his knees, then to his face before a stunned Aragorn. The Ranger had no time to wonder at this, for another of the villagers quickly slid past an occupied Halbarad and took the fallen man’s place.

Legolas saw what the others could not. For a brief moment, just after Elise had touched the old man, the Wood-Elf had seen the man’s soul standing where his body once stood. The man had just enough time to look down at his lifeless corpse, then look around him. He saw Legolas and must have intuitively known what had happened to him, or perhaps he guessed it from seeing the Elf’s actual body lying just behind the Ranger whom he’d been fighting a moment ago and now seeing the wraithlike, phantasmal Wood-Elf off to the side; in response, the elder Adan lifted a hand in a strange bid for either help or greeting, ere the torch rolling from the hand of his own dead body lit upon his incorporeal form and began dissipating his presence gradually, beginning with his feet and ending with the hand he held out to Legolas for succor. Never one to take death lightly, a pang of guilt ran through the Wood-Elf’s being; and yet, he could not be too upset with Elise for having saved Aragorn’s hide.

The newest villager to try to attack Estel held a pitchfork in hand. Aragorn deflected the man’s first attempt to thrust the tines of the pitchfork into his belly, but before he could make another attempt, Elise rapped the villager on his shoulder. As had the man before him, this one fell to the ground in a lifeless heap, and as had the soul of the man before him, this villager lingered just a moment ere the illumination from his friends’ torches cast him into the afterlife.

The menfolk who had been lingering on the outskirts of the skirmish saw their dead friends, and enraged and seeking vengeance, several of them ran towards Estel to attack him all at once, forgoing the better sense of leaving themselves room to maneuver. Kalin, who had thus far managed to avoid most of the melee in his effort to stand beside his Prince’s body to protect him, was forced to come forward to aid Estel, since the Ranger was soon to be outnumbered four to one. Before Kalin could even draw his sword from its sheath, two of the four men who had come for Estel dropped dead ere they were within striking distance of Aragorn’s broadsword, while of the other two, one stumbled upon his dead friend’s body and fell to his face on the ground and the other came to a grinding halt when he saw what had happened to his companions. He stood facing Aragorn, giving the Ranger a haunted and terrified, slack-jawed look of surprise, but Estel looked no less surprised than did the villager. When the fallen man rapidly picked himself up from where he’d landed, he ran again towards Aragorn, prompting his friend into action, as well. Kalin was now at Estel’s side, Legolas saw, and once again hoped Elise would not come into contact with either of them by accident.

And still, the other Elves and Rangers were unhurt and thus far had not killed anyone, although now several more of the villagers had superficial wounds on their arms, torso, and legs, and three were knocked unconscious. The wounded were removing themselves from the way of their own accord, while one brave man rescued those unconscious from being trampled underfoot by dragging them out of the fray; however, once the others who fought noticed the growing pile of dead men at Aragorn and Kalin’s feet, they began to shift away from the Ranger and Silvan, though they did not move to engage the others in a fight. Thus, over half the human men saw as the final two of the four who had run at Estel dropped dead to the ground before Aragorn, with neither having been struck a blow by the Ranger or sentry. Those who saw this and had been standing back for their chance to engage the Noldor, Rangers, or Wendt no longer wanted to do so, and began moving away from the rest of their kith and towards the wounded at the rear. The villagers attacking Halbarad and Elladan saw this strange occurrence, as well, and all but ran away from the Ranger and Noldo to join the rest of their frightened brethren. When the others who fought Reana, Elrohir, Jakob, and Wendt noticed the retreat of their fellow Edain, they unwisely ceased fighting – had the Noldor and humans been less honorable, they might have cut them down while the men were glancing around in confusion as to what was happening and why no one else was fighting. As it was, Legolas’ friends let the villagers back away and out of the fight, until the sounds of swords striking wood and metal, of grunts and calls and heavy respirations, and flesh striking flesh ceased altogether, and an eerie silence overtook the fallow field where this short-lived battle had occurred.

Randric bellowed at the retreating men to advance, for the farmer had yet to fight anyone and was still shouting his hateful inspiration and invectives to keep them attacking. He had not seen his kith fall dead as had the others, but he saw them lying dead at Estel’s feet, and now screamed while pointing his short sword at Aragorn, “Him! Don’t just stand there. Why are you running, you cowards? Kill him!”

A single reckless man heeded Randric’s call and sprinted at Estel, seeking to avenge the deaths of his friends. With no combatants upon them or even around them now, Elladan, Elrohir, Reana, Jakob, Halbarad, Wendt, and Kalin all watched with Estel in utter bewilderment as the rash man dropped dead ere he even grew close enough to Estel for the villager’s purloined spike – longer than was the reach of Aragorn’s broadsword – to come near its target of the Ranger’s belly. This time, even Randric saw what happened, for every conscious eye in the field was upon Aragorn and the dead men at his feet.  

Had Legolas been able to approach the villagers without fear of succumbing to the light of their torches, he would have done as Elise had done, the Prince realized in that moment, for his friends and lover were safe, and save for the bleeding cut upon Aragorn’s face, there had been no true injury to the Noldor, Rangers, Wendt, or Kalin. Despite himself, Legolas smiled. Elise stood at the pile of dead men, watching Aragorn for some reason. He wanted to go to her but feared the discarded and sputtering torches lying in the withered grass, and so called out, “Tithen pen?”

To the Wood-Elf’s surprise, Estel startled as if he had heard the Prince and looked around him. The man whispered to the dark of the night, “Greenleaf?”

When Elise took another step towards Estel, Legolas promptly forgot his joy at her aid and ran towards where the girl appeared on the verge of touching Aragorn as she had the dead men at his feet.


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot force myself to go back and read this story. I honestly don't know how any of you are reading it. I should have deleted it when I had the chance.

“No!” he called out to Elise, to Estel, to the Maker and any gods in general in hopes of someone stopping the haunt from touching his beloved Ranger. “Stay back from Estel, Elise!” he shouted at the girl even as he ran forward to try to stop her himself.

He knew from their reactions that both Aragorn and Kalin heard him shout, even if to them it sounded like a distant whisper from the depths of a deep, stonewalled, dry well; in response to the vague threat his Prince’s demand portended and the desperation in his voice, Kalin kept his oath to his Prince to protect the Ranger at all costs and grabbed hold of Estel’s cloak to yank the Ranger back to him, catching the Adan in his arms before he could fall and effectively removing him from Elise’s general vicinity. While neither man nor Silvan could see Elise, they were both now well away from her, at least. This didn’t stop Legolas from trying to get to the girl – he still feared she would merely clear the scant space between her and the Ranger and sentry and touch one or both of his loved ones, ending Estel’s life too early and beginning the end of Kalin’s life.

However, before Legolas could get to Elise, she disappeared from in front of Estel as though she had never stood there, and then reappeared just in front of Legolas. It startled the Wood-Elf fiercely, such that he stumbled backwards out of fear of her. He wasn’t sure whether she could actually harm him anymore, since he was no more than a haunt himself, but instinct made him wary of the girl. Elise held her hands out to him and caught his tunic, pulling him into her much as Kalin had just done for Aragorn. The girl’s strength in her human body would never have been enough to move the laegel around so easily, but as an apparition, Elise was much stronger than Legolas, and he could not step back and away from her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, as if she had not just been about to touch Estel and remove the last flickering light of his faer. Innocently, she looked up at him with genuine concern for him but also miserableness in her worry that she had upset the Wood-Elf by her killing of the menfolk.

Even though her eyes remained the molten red of liquid iron and her form was the same monochromatic, diaphanous, fearsome body as when first he saw her, Legolas wrapped his arms around the girl’s shoulders and hugged her tightly to him. Love for her did not compel him to do this, but fear, for he could not shake the sight of her advancing upon Estel and thought she might try again. With her in his arms, he walked backwards, taking her with him, and thus moving away from the now fewer burning torches that might scatter his faer ere he was ready.

“What were you doing? Why were you trying to touch Estel?” he asked her, dreading to hear the answer.

“You’re sad,” she explained innocuously, which only made her reasoning that much more terrifying when she tried to tell him, “I thought if he were dead and with us, then you wouldn’t be so sad.”

At first, he could think of nothing to say to her in answer. His throat worked compulsively, swallowing repeatedly, though since he required no air and no nourishment, it was merely a nervous tic as his mind fought against the obscuration of horror clouding it. “Not yet,” he told the girl. The braids he had plaited into her hair were somewhat mussed; Legolas absentmindedly straightened them as he told her, “Not yet. Let him die on his own. Give him time to say goodbye to his brothers and friends. Don’t you wish you had been given the chance to say farewell to your loved ones?” he tried to reason with her, his fingers running over what once had been hair the color of corn silk but was now the pale hoary shade of moonlight.

This worked upon the girl’s sentiment, he could tell, for her confusion gave way to understanding and she nodded her assent. To Legolas’ immense relief, Elise agreed, “As long as it doesn’t take too long. If he doesn’t die before the sun rises, you won’t get to see him when he goes. You need to say goodbye, too, you know, and I don’t want you being sad that you didn’t get the chance to.”

He watched the lull of the people in front of him. Few were moving, with his own companions standing as they had been, though they remained at ready, and Randric’s folk idling about while he yelled at them to attack. No one seemed ready to try again, however – not yet, not when they had all seen the strange deaths of their kith. Meanwhile, Legolas considered Elise’s statement. By the girl’s madcap idea of fairness and goodness, her advice made sense. Legolas did not try to dissuade her from this decision, for it bought him time right now – time in which he might be able to find a means to communicate with Aragorn to tell him what needed to be done, and thus time in which he might still save Estel’s life.

_Estel can hear me, as can Kalin, I think. If I can find a way to tell them to burn Elise’s body – or at least the splinter in her finger – it may not be too late to remove the imprecation upon Estel._ The child in his arms shifted and sighed her content to be held, to have a friend, and where Legolas’ phantom heart ought to have laid, he felt the familiar pang of grief as he thought, _I must find a way to tell them with Elise not near, else she might take out her anger over my perfidy upon the others._ He didn’t cherish the thought of betraying the girl, but she could not remain here, and although he had tried to talk her into going to the afterlife on her own, she did not seem willing. He would need to force her.

It suddenly occurred to Legolas that Elise had just intimated Estel would disappear come dawn while Legolas would remain. If and how she could accomplish this, the Prince did not know, but it worried him. Legolas looked to the blazing fire and then back to the milling, nervous gathering of villagers and the perplexed, wary Elves and Rangers just across the way. Kalin had righted Estel, at least, though he still held the man by the arms to pull him out of danger again or perhaps just to offer some warmth, for Aragorn’s shuddering was frighteningly worse. They were both silent but watching the area around them as if Legolas might materialize before their eyes.

_Estel will not last much longer,_ he decided of his lover, _but the immediate threat to him and the others must be taken care of first._

Finally, Legolas replied to the girl, telling her, “That’s fine, melui pen. There is still time before dawn, and from how Estel looks, he will not be long in dying,” he suggested, although his anxiety trebled at the admission. “Just stay here with me, alright?” he asked of her in hopes of keeping her away from his friends.

But the girl pulled out of his embrace of her and turned around so she could observe the others. Randric was trying to regroup his makeshift mob with some success, from what Legolas could see. Elise stepped back so she was standing nearly upon Legolas’ ephemeral toes. She grabbed his hands and incited him into hugging her from behind, then told the Prince firmly, “I can’t stay here with you because I’m not finished yet. That one still needs to die,” she said, pointing clearly at Randric.

Legolas could not disagree on that account.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Did Elise just try to touch me and finish me off?_ he asked himself, while wishing the men of the village were gone so he could try to talk to Legolas.

From behind him, in a whisper so quiet none of the Edain but Estel could overhear, Kalin asked, “You heard my Prince, didn’t you? He is near. He did this.”

He nodded, believing it to be true; the hands upon his arms tightened in response before they released him entirely. Kalin ever so carefully stepped over his Prince’s head so he stood on one side of the downed laegel and Aragorn stood on the other. The human was loath to move in the slightest lest Elise was still around, in wait to drown the last remnant of his faer’s flame, but he had to trust his Greenleaf had reined in the girl’s murderous intent. Besides, Kalin had moved so his path would be free of the potential impediment of the dead men’s bodies and it would be wise of Estel to do the same, lest he find himself tripping over them while fighting – if Randric had his way and incited his people into restarting the fighting, that was.

Estel looked down to watch that he did not step upon the Prince as he moved forward, only to realize the import of having several dead men on the ground at his feet, none of whom were killed by his own hand. And he had felt Legolas’ presence acutely, as if the Elf had grown nearer – more so than even a few moments before – though it was now as it had been by being slightly farther away.

His brothers, fellow Rangers, Wendt, and the menfolk of the village were all watching him and Kalin, even while Randric pranced around his kith, shoving and insulting them to rouse the men back into combat. Everyone could tell something strange had just happened but few understood what; likewise, the villagers were well aware now that the men at Aragorn’s feet were dead by some unnatural force. In other circumstances, Estel might have found some dark amusement to see how the remaining villagers glared at him in rage caused by Aragorn ostensibly having killed their brethren. Given that the men had been trying to kill Aragorn, it seemed silly for the remaining villagers to be upset by Estel’s having defended himself, even though it had technically not been his hand to kill them. So shocked were the menfolk – and his brothers and Watchers, for that matter – everyone but Randric stood in silent perturbation until finally, someone dropped his hoe, where it made a muted thud upon an unconscious man’s chest. The sound broke the deathly quiet and thus the spell under which everyone had been bound to dazed reticence.

“He’s like Elise!” one of the men called out, his small dagger pointed at Estel. Even Randric stopped his yelling to listen to the tall, scruffy, and obviously drunk man, who ran a hand through the short, tight curls upon his head. He had a deep and seeping wound in the dark flesh of his arm, but like most of the villagers save the ones dead at Estel’s feet, the man would survive this with only a scar and wounded pride, should they not force the Rangers and Eldar into killing them. Looking around to his fellow villagers, he shouted, “You saw the same as did I. They fell dead without a scratch upon them. Randric is right. He and these Elves brought this curse upon our village. He probably killed Elise, too, and made her what she is,” the man accused with his dagger jabbing at the air in front of him with each word, while more than likely desiring it were Aragorn’s chest he stabbed instead.

Yes, it was apparent something unnatural had happened to cause their friends’ deaths, of course, but other than the man who had blamed Aragorn, no one else seemed willing to speak out against the Ranger, nor did anyone approach him – not even his own brothers or friends. But then, his brothers and Reana had heard what Kalin asked Estel and so could guess the cause of the villagers’ deaths. Even though the Edain of his companions had not heard Kalin’s whisper, Estel’s fellow Rangers and Wendt could well guess who had killed the men at Aragorn’s feet – Legolas or Elise – though Estel believed it to be the former.

“Sorcery!” Randric bellowed in outrage. He sprinted to the man who had faulted Estel and clapped him on the back in camaraderie before he began pacing between his fellow villagers like a king trying to encourage his men. “I told you! These Elves have brought sorcery here to our settlement, and if we let them get away with it, they will leave their sorcerous mark behind upon us, and we will all be cursed and cast out of the Maker’s light for letting it happen! These filthy whoremongers need to be stopped! They are an offense to the Maker and it is our duty to rid the world of them,” he shouted like a religious zealot, though Aragorn had the clear impression that Randric had never prayed to Eru for anything but to plead on his own behalf.

Aragorn stopped listening to Randric when he began again to shout out insults at the men, who still refrained from advancing upon the outsiders. Randric decried his kith’s courage and reminded them of the deaths of their loved ones – deaths needing to be avenged. But Estel hoped this would now be over. He hoped with the deaths of the men lying at his feet, the others would be wary to attack again, and thus this travesty might end. The sooner it did, the sooner he could try to speak to Legolas. In fact, if he and Kalin had indeed heard the Prince a moment ago, then Aragorn need not die ere he was able to talk to his lover a final time before his own demise. Dawn was still a few hours away, but it was coming too soon for Estel regardless. Besides, from the way he felt, he had little time left anyway.

“Will you just stand here?” Randric was shouting in question, his arms and hands making wild gesticulations as he swung his short sword around, and nearly cleaved off one of his kith’s arms with his wild carelessness. “Cowards! We must kill the Elf whore and his Ranger buggerer or they will taint what remains of our village with their filth and blasphemy.”

Estel heard Kalin’s savage, low growl from beside him and felt the same wrath as did the sentry, for since they both knew Legolas was near, neither wanted for the Prince to hear this crazed man’s foul opinions of the laegel. Legolas had endured enough insults in his lifetime, and more than enough in the past year. His own father had called him a whore, while the merchants and Mithfindl had called the laegel the same – Legolas was anything but, though the Prince had suffered from the worry he was so. Aragorn’s fingers gripped his broadsword so tightly they began to ache, his blade ravening for the man’s blood to decorate it.

The twins, Reana, Wendt, Halbarad, and Jakob remained primed to be rushed by the mob. However, they did not reform their half-circle around Legolas’ body, and thus when a single man was spurred into action by Randric’s rebel rousing, there was no one standing between him and the prone laegel’s body. The villager ran straight for Legolas; and yet, seeing this, Kalin leapt over his Prince’s legs and in front of Aragorn to place himself in the way before he could reach either the Prince or Estel. This did not stop the man at all, for he thought if he could not get around Kalin, he might instead kill the sentry so he could get to Legolas, to end the Prince so his body could be burnt and the calamity upon their village averted. Everyone watched the man’s rapid sprint to the sentry. Everyone saw how Kalin held his sword out defensively, the sentry having not a single qualm about slaying the man even though the others had successfully fended off the humans without felling any of them. And thus, every pair of eyes was upon the villager as he fell to the ground in a heap long before getting close to Kalin.

_Greenleaf. It must be Greenleaf,_ the Ranger absently decided. He could find no reason for Elise to want to aid the Wood-Elf guard, but Legolas would have died to keep Kalin safe, just as Kalin would have happily died to keep his Prince safe.

As the Ranger and the others watched in dumbfounded silence, the torch the man held flew through the air as he fell lifeless to the ground, and to Aragorn’s horror, it landed atop the prone Prince’s torso. The oily, burning pitch upon the cloth wrapped end of the torch smeared across the tunic over Legolas’ chest before it came to rest on the Elf’s borrowed cloak, setting alight his lover’s body instantly. Both Kalin and Aragorn leapt towards Legolas’ body to beat out the flames, but ere either could get there to grab the hissing torch burning through the tunic and cloak at Legolas’ side, the torch lifted as if by an invisible hand. Aragorn and Kalin staggered to a stop, while everyone else watched in motionless, flummoxed awe. The torch was flung away, towards the gathered villagers, who were too awed to move from the way, though luckily it did not strike any of them.

_Is it Legolas or Elise?_ the man now wondered again, wishing he knew, for he worried whether to get closer if it were Elise. If it were Legolas trying to save his own skin – quite literally – then the Ranger need not fear being touched and killed, but if it were Elise trying to aid the Elf, then he would not want to come into contact with her. _Surely, it must be Greenleaf. Who else would have killed those villagers to save us? Elise would not have cared to let us die, so long as she has Legolas for company,_ he reasoned, though in the end, he found it didn’t matter, for while he dithered, the tunic and cloak upon Legolas burned. In the end, he found he didn’t mind to risk the last hours of his life to put out the flames upon his lover’s body.

And so, as Estel strode the last few steps to try to extinguish the fire, he again stumbled to a halt when he saw how the smoldering cloak was folded over upon the tunic, smothering the flames upon the Elf’s torso. It did not stop him for long from going to his lover, nor did it stop Kalin from going to his Prince. In fact, Kalin arrived before Estel, fell to his knees, and laid his own body across his Prince’s body to smother the remaining flames. Estel dropped to a crouch across from the sentry, praying for Kalin not to come into contact with Elise’s haunt, even if Estel did. When Kalin sat back to inspect his charge, the two checked over the Wood-Elf Prince to ensure the cloth was not smoldering any longer.

“For fuck’s sake,” one of the villagers whispered in shock, which was the only sound except the soft rustling noises Aragorn and Kalin made while patting Legolas’ form to check for unseen embers.

With everyone’s attention upon Legolas, Kalin, and Estel, and all of them in amazement over the bizarre events having just occurred, none of them was paying much attention to Randric, who took their inattention as his opportunity finally to attack. Even the twins, Reana, and his fellow Rangers had their backs turned to the villagers as they watched the two Wood-Elves and Aragorn for a repeat or furtherance of the supernatural events having just occurred.

Since his back was to Randric, Aragorn’s only warning was Jakob’s shout to his Chieftain to beware, but as Estel turned in response, he did not have enough time to bring up his broadsword from where he had carelessly laid it on the ground beside him. Randric’s short sword was already coming down towards Estel. Behind the man, the twins were roused from their astonished stupor and began to sprint towards their brother to try to intercept Randric, and across from Legolas’ body, Kalin tried to find his own abandoned sword on the ground beside him to parry the coming blow, but Aragorn knew they would not be able to save him. He still tried to lift his broadsword, but the broadsword was not meant for such close combat, and its weight combined with how weak his body now was made his effort futile.

_Maybe I will see Greenleaf when I die._ His death had never truly scared him. He was a warrior and a Ranger, and always assumed he would die in battle. Only the thought of never seeing Legolas again – not even in the afterlife – frightened the man. _Maybe I will have the chance to see him one last time as a ghost, like him,_ he thought as his end was upon him.

However, Randric’s blade stopped mid-swing; the man’s enraged battle cry ended in a yelp of surprise. Randric released the weapon rapidly as if it had burnt him. Aragorn stared up at the sword hovering over his head, which was still at its sharply honed end but quivering at its handle, as a knife might do if thrown and stuck in a block of wood. Randric stared at his weapon with unhidden terror, utterly forgetting the man he had tried to kill was kneeling on the ground before him, but even then, Aragorn did not gut the man as he had all rights and desire to do, but watched with everyone else as Randric tugged at the handle of his short sword to no avail. Behind the man, the twins had come to a stop, for neither wanted to walk into whatever haunt had just saved Estel, and to them and to Kalin, it was clear either Legolas or Elise was the one keeping Aragorn’s life safe.

After a few more futile tugs, Randric again released the handle of his short sword; amazingly, it remained in the air for a few seconds, with everyone watching it in incredulity, ere it fell to the grass just before Estel’s knees. Aragorn thought the man might try to pick up the blade and make another attempt upon his life – the twins seemed to think the same, for Estel could see the desire to stride forward upon their identical faces, although both abstained in fear of what unseen thing might be between them and the villager.

“Sorcery,” the man whispered. He glared at Aragorn, obviously thinking the Ranger was the cause of this extraordinary event. Randric began to back away from Estel, Legolas, and his sword on the ground, deriding Estel as he did so, “You and your Elf whore are – ”

Whatever invective the farmer tried to say was ended ere he could finish, and Randric made it no more than three steps backwards ere his eyes went wide, his face grew slack, and he crumpled to the withered grass, falling back bonelessly and nearly landing upon Legolas’ feet as the spiteful life was imbibed from his body in one fell swallow.

Once more, quiet pervaded the surrounding area; no one moved for a while, not even Estel, Kalin, or the twins, the latter of whom were eager to be at Legolas’ side to check for burns. Suddenly, one of the villagers at the back broke free of the group and took off at a run away from the altercation, towards the barnyard, and to the dirt path leading to the main road beyond. It wasn’t long before another man took off after him. And then, the villagers’ determination and hubris broke. Even if it were not Estel himself doing all this, an unseen force siding with the Elves and Rangers was unfightable, besides being abjectly terrifying. The Edain did not care how the Elves and Rangers were just as awestruck as were they. The Noldor and Watchers observed as the Edain dropped their torches and makeshift weapons ere they began to flee the area. Some ran to the dirt path to follow the road, others ran through the fields, and a few ran around the smoking vestiges of the house, as if to hide behind it before making their way back to the village.

Of those who had been knocked unconscious, only one remained who had not woken from it, and this lone man was carted away by two of his brethren, but none tried to collect the dead. Those who were too injured to make it away without aid were helped along by friends, while the man whose tendon was cut by Estel earlier hobbled on his own, using a shovel to aid him in totteringly limping his course as quickly as he could to the main road.

The men left Elise’s corpse at the bonfire, though her family’s bodies were burning still. The stench of scorching flesh wafted upon the smoke carried by the night’s algid breeze, causing Aragorn’s eyes to water, though his relief played some part in this.

_It’s over,_ the thankful Ranger sighed to himself. He glanced at Randric’s fallen body. Of all the now deceased villagers, Randric was the only one whom Estel felt no regret over seeing dead. The stooped over farmer’s wide, glazed over eyes were still open in death, and from how his body had fallen, he appeared to be staring at Legolas’ foot. Aragorn had the sudden, silly desire to knock Randric’s face away so not even in his death could the man look upon Legolas. _Now, finally, we can go back to trying to save Greenleaf,_ he decided, even though he was not sure of how to do it, but told himself, _And mayhap with the villagers gone, I can try to talk to Legolas._

Kalin seemed oblivious to the menfolk’s departure, as the Silvan sentry was too preoccupied with checking over his Prince for any damage caused by the torch. Estel breathed out another sigh of disbelieving respite, but soon began helping Kalin with his task. Kalin had out his dagger and was cutting Legolas’ scorched tunic away so they would not need to aggravate the Prince’s broken ribs in trying to take it off him. Once the cloth was cut enough to expose the Elf’s torso, Estel began to inspect his lover’s skin. Though red in places, Legolas had not been burned, at least. He meant to ask his brothers for confirmation of this, but soon, the twins had enough of watching the villagers’ flight and knelt one on either side of he and Kalin to inspect the Wood-Elf for themselves. Thus far, none of them spoke, for they were all too shocked to do so, it seemed. Halbarad, Jakob, and Wendt gathered around the twins, Kalin, and Estel about Legolas’ body, though Reana kept watch to ensure none of the villagers came back in hopes of taking any of them down while they were preoccupied.

With Legolas being tended and the immediate danger now over, Elrohir finally broke the silence by exclaiming softly, "What in bloody Udûn just happened?”

“It was Greenleaf. It had to be Greenleaf,” Aragorn answered, though in truth, he still vacillated between the two haunts as to who it could have been.

He could not imagine it being Elise to have aided them. It didn’t explain how Legolas had been able to move about in the torch’s light, nor did it sit right with Estel, as he would never have expected Legolas to be so willing to kill the Edain villagers, but he supposed his lover had no choice. And as for the light – well, he truly didn’t understand all there was to know of the situation. As far as he knew, Elise might have done something to make Legolas a haunt permanently, the thought of which was discomforting.

Having checked over the Wood-Elf’s slowly dying rhaw, the twins, Ranger, and Kalin sat back on their heels or arses, with Elladan and Elrohir appearing very much as if they would soon begin questioning the Silvan and Adan for answers – answers neither Aragorn nor Kalin had to give.

_Damned villagers took off in a great hurry, didn’t they, Greenleaf?_ he asked the Wood-Elf. He could have asked this aloud to Legolas but did not yet want to frighten his brothers until he had the chance to speak to them, to answer their questions, and thus tell them all he knew, little as it was. Estel tried and failed to keep his body still as a bout of paroxysmal shivering overtook him; in response, Elladan scooted closer to his Adan sibling and wrapped his arm around the young human’s waist while pressing his chest against the man’s side. The warmth from the Noldo’s body was soothing, though not nearly enough to warm Aragorn. _We need to hurry if we are to have any hope to end Elise._

To forfend his brothers’ questioning for a moment, and to keep his lover’s faer safe, should it be near, Estel looked about to see if any of the menfolk’s torches still burnt, only to find that several were still aflame and lying sputtering in the dry grass, where they might soon start a wildfire. He instructed Jakob, “Douse all the torches.”

Jakob nodded and took off to make certain of this, along with a very shaken but unhurt Wendt. Later, Aragorn would have a talk with the blacksmith, if he lived long enough to do so. He wanted to apologize to Wendt for his irritation with the man earlier that day. He also wanted to thank him for his assistance in the fight against his own villagers. Wendt had not needed to be part of the fight, and in doing so, he had alienated himself from his own kith – possibly permanently – because even should the rest of the settlement’s people not be as prejudiced as the dregs who had come out to the farm to incinerate it and then left in dishonorable defeat, those of Wendt’s kith who had survived the small, short-lived battle would hold a grudge against the smith, Estel felt certain, and Wendt’s life could never be the same in his village as it had been before today. It may even be in danger because of it, and not just from the men who had fought against them tonight. Aragorn wanted to speak to his brothers about offering for Wendt to go to Imladris with them, where he could join the household for at least as long as it took him to work out how to resettle somewhere else, although the Ranger was certain his father would welcome Wendt permanently in the Last Homely House, provided he would continue his work as a smith.

“Is everyone well?” Halbarad asked, looking at each of their companions for injury. In turn, everyone affirmed they were fine, save for Kalin who was so enraptured with caring for his Prince that he had not even heard Halbarad’s question. At seeing all were relatively uninjured, Halbarad ran a bloody hand through his silver hair, painting it rubicund by this, ere he shook his head and muttered, “This’ll be the last time we are welcome in these parts,” before he walked off to join Jakob in doing as their Chieftain bid.

Between the two Rangers and Wendt, the men began to put out every single burning torch so there would be no more artificial light in the area where they sat with Legolas’ body.

Elladan pulled away from Estel and held his hand out to Elrohir. Without being asked, his twin brother handed him the satchel of supplies with their healing items within, and Elladan began digging through it. “Here, Estel. Let me clean and see to that cut on your cheek,” the elder Noldo insisted.

Estel had quite forgotten about the wound there, having not felt the pain from it when it happened. So cold was he and so numbed from Elise’s imprecation, Aragorn could scarcely feel anything at all. Obediently, he allowed Elladan to tilt his head how the Elf wanted it so Elladan could tend the wound made to his face by the hoe.

“You think Greenleaf killed these men to aid us?” Elrohir asked him. The younger Noldo was assisting Kalin in giving the Prince’s body some nourishment in the form of small sips of miruvor, with Kalin holding his Prince’s head aloft and Elrohir tipping the flask to let the liqueur dribble between Legolas’ lips. “You truly believe he is here?”

Aragorn looked to Kalin and saw the same uncertainty reflected back at him that he felt himself. “I don’t know if it was Greenleaf to have killed the men,” he admitted, turning his head back to Elladan to give his Elven brother access in wiping the blood from his cheek. “But Greenleaf is here. I swear it. He is here now, watching and listening to us. And I think Elise is with him.”

Earlier that night, the two Noldor had not believed Estel. They had assumed their human brother was wishfully thinking Legolas’ faer lingered as a means of coping with the Prince’s death. The twins did not argue Estel’s claim of how Legolas lingered on as an incorporeal faer – now, the twins were not so skeptical.


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've actually begun editing like I said I would. So, here is a chapter to tide you over for a few weeks while I finish editing. No cliffhanger here, I promise. Enjoy.

_Does Estel truly believe I would kill these men?_ Legolas pondered in abstraction when he heard Aragorn suggest as much to the man’s Elven brothers.

He tried to call up some feeling of indignation over the Ranger thinking so poorly of him that Aragorn would assume Legolas could so easily and willingly take the lives of these wayward yet innocent men, but of course, the Prince then realized he had been about to try to do that very thing before Elise stepped in and did the job for him. Near to the pile of dead bodies, standing above Randric’s fallen corpse, Elise gazed down at the lifeless leader of the mob who had instigated the immediate events leading to all this carnage, who had called her uncle and new beloved friend some very foul names. She had been doing this for several minutes – just staring at Randric while looking very much as if she wished she could bring the man back to life to kill him again. As long as she did not move closer to the others, Legolas wouldn’t call out to her or try to go near the girl; right now, Legolas was vainly trying to order his jumbled thoughts, to find some method – now that the altercation between his friends and the villagers was finished – to solve the rest of the their problems, as well.

“No stitches, at least,” Elladan was telling his human brother. With his clean, wet cloth, he gave a final wipe at the wound made to Aragorn’s cheek before he smeared it with some unguent meant to keep it from festering. The Noldo tossed aside his cloth and clapped his brother on the arm, telling him in forced good cheer, “It isn’t that deep. It won’t even scar, I think.”

Legolas saw as his lover smiled absently at this good news before he resumed helping Kalin tend to his Prince. Said Prince – or his haunt, that is – could see in Estel’s eyes how the man thought it useless to worry about unguent or stitches or scars when for all intents and purposes, Aragorn would soon be dead. But the twins would carry on as normal until the moment it was time to bury their human brother, as was their way, and would keep caring for Aragorn in the same devoted manner as Kalin and Aragorn used in their continuance of caring for Legolas’ uninhabited body.

Appearing pleased with herself, Elise finally returned to Legolas’ side, with no steps taken between, but merely flitting from one spot to the next in the blink of an eye. The startled Wood-Elf coerced himself to smile at Elise. He murmured with what he hoped was believable gratitude, “Thank you, tithen pen. Thank you for saving them.”

Despite the connection between them, she must have not seen through his shocked mendacity, for Elise grinned back at Legolas, wrapped her short, thin arms around his waist, and hugged the Silvan tightly. He bit back his aversion and reflexively returned the hug. Before he had become a haunt himself, Legolas and Elise had shared a connection between them allowing each to feel the other’s emotions and garner some understanding of the other’s thoughts; now that he was in the same condition as Elise, this was lessened, it seemed, for if it had not been, Legolas thought for sure she would realize the disgust he felt for the girl’s actions, just as he ought to have felt her nervousness when she had lied to him about being able to save Estel by removing the curse.

It had been painful to watch her senseless killing of the villagers, but she had done it to save his friends, to save Estel. It was even more painful to have seen what the others could not see – each dead man’s soul flashing briefly out of his body before being scattered by the light of the torches his brethren carried. It had been heartbreaking to view each man’s understanding of his own demise. To Legolas’ thinking, these men had been caught up in the violence of their shared desperation. They, like Elise, were not necessarily evil overall, even if they had been acting maliciously this night. Indeed, Randric’s life was the only one Legolas could not find it in himself over which to mourn.

Elise felt contentedly blissful to be held in the Elf’s embrace and did not seemly likely to move away anytime soon. Over her shorter stature, Legolas watched as Halbarad and Jakob did as their Chieftain had requested by putting out all the villagers’ torches, many of which the men had simply dropped as they fled from the area. Soon, only the moonlight illuminated the field. He listened as Estel told his brothers and Kalin how he had felt Legolas during the altercation, how he knew his Elven lover had been near. Even as he said so, Aragorn looked up from the laegel’s body and scanned the field of whispering grass, smiling vaguely at the dark of night around him – smiling at Legolas, who the man could not see but of whom he could feel the presence.

“What’s wrong?” the girl asked the Elf, leaning back out of his embrace to stare up into his face. Puzzled to find her new friend upset when she had thought her actions would appease his worry and please him, she wondered, “Why are you crying?”

He had just thought the connection between them was lessened, but now wondered if he should have realized she would discover his true feelings, for just as he could sense her happiness to be near him and her satisfaction to have helped and to have killed the vile Randric, Elise could apparently feel his sudden sorrow; but then, the Elf hadn’t realized he was weeping, either. Legolas swept her hair – braided from his affectionate attentions earlier though it was coming loose now – from off her thin shoulders.

He considered trying to deflect her concern but thought better of it. It would not do to lie to the girl. Through his tears, he once again forced himself to smile at her. “I am grateful you helped to save my friends’ lives, but I am also still very sad. I cry because I know Estel will die, even though you saved him from the villagers, because you said you couldn’t keep your end of our bargain. Because the curse you put on him is purloining his life even now.”

“But you will get to see him when he dies.” Elise’s exultant, carefree smile slid from her face incrementally. Slowly, she began to sulk, which made her look older than her few years, and combined with the morbid appearance she affected with her colorless pellucidity, fiery eyes, and acerbic scowl, malformed her from an innocent child back to the wraith who had terrified the Wood-Elf when first he had seen her. Bitter with resentment for Legolas reminding her of this broken promise, she groused, “I can’t take it back. I can’t.”

“I know, Lissie,” he called her as Wendt had called her when speaking to his niece in the middle of the road the afternoon previous. By his hold of her shoulders, he drew her back to him and held her again. It was very difficult for him to look upon her without wanting to move away from her, especially when she looked as she did at the moment. _She is just a child,_ he reminded himself, though aloud he sighed, “I know, but it still saddens me greatly.”

He watched Estel and Kalin care for his body. His own death was the least of his concerns. Watching his lover and sentry as they worked to rebind his ribs, despite how they must both know he would die soon regardless of their treatment of his injuries, caused the Wood-Elf to weep evermore.

_Estel will die. I cannot stop it. And Kalin will die of grief, I daresay, even if he does as I bid and lasts long enough to protect Estel until his death and then takes word of my demise to my father. After his duty is done, he will let his faer fade to be with me in the Awaiting._

Even without a physical body to feel tired, the Silvan’s faer felt a burden of weariness unlike any he had ever felt before, such that he was no longer capable of standing. He released the girl long enough to plop down to the ground, though in truth, his body did not hit the earth with a jarring thud as he expected, but a painless, soundless drift to the grass. Overhead, the moon was once more out from behind the clouds. He could not feel its ambient illumination upon his face, could take no joy from the beautiful stars visible through the stringy tufts of clouds, nor find comfort in the light, algid breeze he could see blowing through the field but could not feel upon his tear-streaked face. The ground under him ought to have been cold and hard, save for the slight softness of the cushion of etiolated grasses under his rear – not even this could he sense. Elise waited only a moment in standing before where he sat, ere she knelt down in front of him, turned around, and then sat in the cradle his crossed legs made. She leant her reedy back against his chest and pulled at his hands until Legolas took the hint and wrapped his arms around her skinny torso to hug her from behind. Together, they silently watched the goings on of the Rangers and Eldar across the way.

“…and you can go fetch Liandra and Tomas now, if you would, please. And have them bring the horses. We should not tarry here any longer than we must,” Legolas heard Elladan tell Jakob. The elder twin was assuming leadership again, since Estel was engrossed in aiding Legolas’ rhaw – not that the Rangers seemed to mind, for they were accustomed to working with the Noldor of Imladris. More to himself than to Jakob, Elladan worriedly reasoned, “The men who have fled might not come back, or they may bring reinforcements. Let us err on the side of caution.”

With a nod, Jakob took off at a trot to do as he was asked. Although Wendt had remained brave and calm during the actual fight, presently, the man’s hands were shaking fiercely, his dark skin appeared ashen, and he looked around him with no direction as to what he ought to do now. Legolas was extremely glad to see Wendt unhurt. The smith was not a seasoned warrior as were the Elf’s friends, but Wendt had done well in the fight and had stuck beside the Rangers and Eldar, though it had turned his own people against him.

Noticing the blacksmith’s befuddled shock, Elrohir gently took the Adan by the arm and bid him, “Come, sit with us and rest for a moment. When the Jakob returns with the others, we will speak of what to do.”

Wendt allowed Elrohir to guide him towards Legolas’ body, around which Kalin, Estel, Elladan, and Halbarad were already gathered. Having finished his tending to his Prince’s rhaw, Kalin sat back on his heels and stared down at Legolas’ body. With no self-consciousness at all, the sentry dotingly caressed the younger Wood-Elf’s slack face. “Do you still feel him, Estel?”

“Yes, I do. He is still near. And if he is anything like Elise, he can hear you if you wish to speak to him,” the Ranger suggested. Aragorn was watching Kalin’s gentle caressing. At one point in time, the man might have been aggravatingly jealous of the way the sentry touched his Prince, for weeks ago, Aragorn had been envious of the closeness between Kalin and Legolas. Now, he smiled sadly at how Kalin stroked his charge’s face. “Maybe even, we will be able to hear him should he reply.”

The laegel’s attention perked to listen to what Kalin might have to say to him, but his faithful guard only smiled back at Estel and shook his head, telling the Adan, “My Prince knows already anything I might wish to tell him.”

Upon hearing this, the younger Wood-Elf’s weeping freshened, for Kalin was right. Earlier, ere the laegel’s faer left his rhaw, the two Silvan had been given the chance to say all they needed to say to the other. _Perhaps Kalin has nothing left to tell me, but I need to remind him of the splinter. I need for them to destroy it._ Legolas unintentionally tightened his hold upon Elise because of his harried thoughts, and though she could feel no pain, the girl squirmed from his rough handling. Noticing this, he loosened his embrace and sat his chin down atop her head, which caused her to sigh with peaceful ease. In order to tell Estel or Kalin, Legolas would need to distract Elise away from him, and then distract her from seeing what his companions were doing when they tried to destroy the splinter. _She will not leave me for a second. I know it. And if I try to hold her, she will merely disappear from my arms, reappear at the fire, and kill whoever is trying to destroy her corpse._

From out of the copse along the limestone fence line came Liandra, Jakob, and Tomas, with each of them leading a few horses. Tomas appeared unflappable upon noticing the carnage in the field, but Liandra let loose a plaintive wail and covered her mouth with her free hand. Her long, silver hair had come undone from its bun and was flying about her face in the breeze, but she paid it now mind and now pressed her free hand to her bounteous bosom. Before she had even arrived at the gathering around Legolas’ rhaw, the woman mourned, “Did you have to kill them? I pulled most of these men from between their mother’s thighs. Surely they did not deserve this!”

Elrohir sprang to his feet and went to the aged woman. He first took the leads from her and then took her arm, explaining as they came the rest of the way to join the others, “We killed no one, I promise you, although we had all cause to, Liandra. They sought to slaughter us, each and every one. But in the end, either Elise or Legolas took these men’s lives, though they did so to save ours.”

This was of little comfort to Liandra, of course, although she did appear less aghast to learn it had not been the Elves or Rangers with whom she had thrown in her lot this night. The Noldor and the Rangers, save for Estel, began preparing their horses to leave by checking the tack and securing their belongings. Wendt and Kalin sat in morose silence near to Legolas’ body, with Liandra soon seated beside the blacksmith, her arm around his middle and her head resting upon his thickly muscled upper arm in motherly comfort.

A shiver ran through Legolas’ body. It took him a moment to wonder at this, for he could not feel cold nor heat – it was then the Silvan realized he was sensing his lover’s condition through the connection of their faers, and at once, he turned his attention to the Ranger. Aragorn’s shoulders were turned inwards, his head hanging low, and his body shuddering violently. Legolas knew then that the Adan was in the last moments of his life. He could not help himself – to see Estel suffering like this made him cry out as if the pain were his own. It was hearing his Prince’s cry – distant and muffled though it was to Kalin – which drew the sentry’s attention away from his Prince’s body. As the sentry looked around in instinctive desire to find his Prince, despite knowing he could not, Kalin instead saw Aragorn was faring much worse than moments ago.

“Estel?” the sentry asked the Adan. Receiving no response, Kalin climbed to his knees, leant over Legolas’ body, and shook the Ranger by the shoulder, calling out more loudly this time, “Estel?”

The twins heard this, as did the others, and Elrohir and Elladan forewent their tasks and sprinted back to their human brother's side. Soon, Aragorn had a Noldorin twin on either side of him; Elrohir and Elladan laid the Adan upon the ground, stretching his legs out for him, such that he ended up lying right next to Legolas with little room between them.

“It is his time,” Liandra rued, shaking her hoary head to see the coming death of another man this night.

True though this was, it angered the twins to hear it, and they ignored the woman in favor of trying to make their human sibling as comfortable as possible for the nonce. Elladan placed a soft, nearly empty satchel under Aragorn’s head while Elrohir laid a bedroll over his body. Estel did not seem to notice any of this – the man was shaking hard and continuously, his eyes shut tight and his hands clenched at his sides. Having done all they could for Aragorn, since his condition was not a physical one that either twin could combat with herbs, poultices, or even prayer, Elladan and Elrohir sat side by side at Estel’s middle to keep watch, to await the man’s demise.

Unaware he spoke it aloud, Legolas whispered to himself, “I cannot allow this to happen. I cannot let him die.”

Elise pulled free of the Elf and moved away so she knelt before him, blocking his view of Aragorn in doing so. Immediately, Legolas crawled to his own knees and away from her so he wouldn’t miss what were likely Estel’s last living moments. “Legolas?” she asked him simply. Clear upon her face and in her voice was the confusion she felt to see her new friend’s sorrow, for in her innocence and childish selfishness the girl still could not understand why Legolas was upset over Aragorn’s looming death. “What’s wrong? You’ll get to see him soon.”

He shook his head against her strange notions. He pressed both hands against where his heart ought to lay, for in that same area in which had resided his grief for months now, the all too familiar pang of sorrow lanced across his pellucid form, causing him to desire to double over from the intensity of it. Only his want to maintain his gaze upon Aragorn saved him from doing so, though he was forced onto his hands and knees in the effort. His body trembled along with Estel’s body; the man’s pain was his own, as well.

“No, this cannot be happening. I cannot let him die,” he whispered again in heartbroken fright. The Elf no longer tried to quell the rampant, rapacious force of his sorrow, and he let a low and soft keen escape from him.

 _Just shout it. Shout to Kalin what must be done and let it be done,_ he told himself.

He could take the chance to end Elise by destroying her corpse, but he would also be chancing not only his guard’s life, but also the lives of everyone else in the field. If Elise touched Kalin before he had the chance to incinerate the girl’s body, someone else would take up the cause, Legolas was certain of it; and then, each of his companions might die in the effort to save Estel’s life. Being that the Eldar’s faers were imbued with more vitality than were the Edain, Kalin or one of the other Elves might be able to live beyond being touched, but there was no guarantee burning the splinter would end the curse, so in the end, risking his sentry or the twins’ lives for this might kill them all.

 _Estel would not want it. He would not want for anyone else to die to save his life,_ Legolas knew but regretted. _If only I could move objects as can Elise, then I would do it myself. Or if only I had the strength she has, so I could keep her bound while someone burns her body._ But he could do neither of those things. And while he loved Estel too much to watch him die, he also loved the man too much to chance to save his life at the likely expense of Estel’s loved ones. Aragorn would never forgive him for it.

Elise lowered her head so she could look up at Legolas’ face and into his lachrymose eyes. She watched and listened to him weep for a moment, ere she began to cry, as well. These were not the fiery tears from before, when her eyes had been like burning coals, but regular tears from clover-green eyes, and she looked like a lost, scared little girl once again, rather than the hateful haunt who had caused all this pain and suffering.

Without rancor, she miserably asked Legolas, “You would rather be with him than with me, wouldn’t you?”

It might have been wisest for him to lie to the girl, since he was apt to spend all of eternity with her, but Legolas could not hide the truth of the matter. So, he nodded and whispered to Elise, “Yes, little one. You are a sweet and beautiful child, and I wish I had known you when you lived, when I lived, but I love Estel more than I have loved anyone else I have ever known. I would do anything to keep him alive and safe, and to be with him.”

It began with a sniffle or two, progressed to a few whimpers, and then Elise was outright bawling. She wailed and carried on like the lonely, dejected little girl she truly was. Legolas wished he had it in his heart to comfort the girl, but across the way, the twins were adjusting where Estel laid on the ground beside the Prince’s very own, lifeless body, so that he was as close as possible to Legolas. The two lovers would die side by side, it seemed. Still on his hands and knees, unable to move lest he miss a moment of what would occur, and his chest aching too much to try, regardless, Legolas watched through watery eyes as Estel fumbled to find the Wood-Elf’s hand, and unable to find it, was aided by Kalin into taking Legolas’ hand in his. While Jakob, Tomas, Halbarad, and Reana stood just behind the twins, looking on in worried listlessness – for there was nothing they could do to help Aragorn now – Elladan and Elrohir remained together at their human brother’s side, with Elladan holding the man’s free hand, and Elrohir grasping Aragorn’s forearm. Kalin watched all this with his Prince’s other hand in his, the one not currently being held by Estel. Paroxysmal fits were jostling the Ranger’s body, drawing pained, low moans from the Adan.

“Please, sweet Elbereth, don’t let him suffer, at least,” he prayed aloud. Varda must not have been listening this night, for Aragorn began heaving his breath as the pain of the spasms in his body racked his normally sturdy frame. Legolas begged no one in particular, for there was none now who could aid his human lover, “Please.”

With her overwhelming strength, Elise pushed Legolas back into sitting upon his heels. She held his face between her tiny, childish hands, and tried to make the Elf look at her, but the Silvan could not look away from Aragorn. In some deep and hidden part of himself, Legolas felt he deserved to suffer by watching Aragorn’s suffering. He had failed Estel, after all, by allowing the man to meet this fate, and he would not deny himself this punishment.

Elise patted Legolas’ face harshly, with what might have been painful force had he the ability to feel it, and accused, “You’re trying to leave me!”

He didn’t understand what she meant and didn’t care to at first, except it then occurred to him, _Even without my body, my faer may still flee to Mandos with the sorrow from Estel’s death._ This was not something he had considered, but considering it now, he realized it would happen, whether Elise wanted it to or not, whether he wanted it to or not.

Aloud, he met the haunt’s allegation with more harsh truth, “I cannot help it. I cannot bear it. I will not be able to stay when Estel dies. It will destroy me. The sorrow will be too great for me, tithen pen.”

“But you’ll get to talk to him soon,” she tried again to reason with the Elf, for she was still unable to understand Legolas’ grief.

Upon her saying this, the horrific thought occurred to Legolas, _But what if that doesn’t happen? What if he merely dies and his faer does not linger long enough for me to talk to him?_ Without replying to Elise and sparing her not another thought, Legolas rushed to stand and staggered towards the others, leaving Elise on the ground where she wept harshly. He may never have another chance to tell Aragorn of his love. He would use the time now, then.

Careful not to come too close lest he accidentally come into contact with Kalin, Legolas stood just behind where his sentry knelt and looked down upon the Adan whom he loved above all others, above all else. In the depths of his despair in the forest near Lake-town, when Sven and Cort had happened upon the Elf and Ranger by some cruel twist of fate, Legolas had decided to live for Aragorn to save the human from the sorrow of losing the Silvan. Even when he feared the nearness of his every friend and even his father, Legolas had loved Estel enough to hand his body to the man, trusting Aragorn with his rhaw and faer by the brook, when first they had shared pleasure together. After that, when the scar had surfaced to undermine the Prince’s sanity, Aragorn had been there to counteract its every illogical invective. Estel had stood beside the Prince when he had gone to his father’s halls to face his King and Kane, defended Legolas against both, and helped to kill Kane for his trespasses. Legolas had combatted his sorrow and withstood his grief so that he could live – for himself this time, but because Aragorn had given the Elf the strength to do so. Legolas had withstood one of the worst beatings he’d ever endured at his father’s hands, left his homeland, and trekked to Imladris without knowing whether he’d be wanted by the Ranger, all in the hopes of Estel still desiring him and being willing to return his affection. Despite Legolas turning away from Aragorn when thinking it was the Adan who had tormented him and poisoned his father, Estel had never wavered in his love for the Elf. Injured and sick from a wound the Prince himself had made, Aragorn had followed the Prince into the woods to aid him against Mithfindl, and been the Prince’s impetus for killing the foul Noldo, for returning to Imladris, and all through this and after, Aragorn had given the Elf hope to live. Estel was Legolas’ only tether to the living world, as was the splinter the tether holding Elise upon Arda. He loved the man so greatly it hurt him. For weeks now, he had suffered nightmares and anxiety over thoughts of Aragorn’s end.

And now, the nightmare was coming true. His tether was soon to be severed. Estel would die.

From the twins beside their human brother, Legolas heard Elrohir humming softly to the Adan in the effort to soothe the man’s soul as it passed. Dawn was still a couple of hours away, at least, so perhaps, if there were truly any mercy in Ilúvatar’s heart, Legolas would be able to speak and spend time with Estel before the light of rising Anor shone down upon the Elf and Ranger a final time, which is when the illumination of the coming day would shred Aragorn’s soul into tatters and send it to Námo. After that, because of his grief, Legolas’ faer would gladly break free of the last fetter of its earthly confines and seek solace in the Halls of Awaiting, should the dawn itself not do it for him. And if Aragorn merely died, then this would be the last he saw of his lover – agonizing and failing from excruciation Legolas had been unable to prevent.

And afterwards, never would they see, speak, or know of each other again. It was unbearable for Legolas to consider. He tried to control the anxious, besorrowed terror these thoughts birthed, lest his faer end up in the Awaiting before he had the chance to speak to the man.

“Estel,” the Wood-Elf said to the Adan, hoping Aragorn was not too far gone in dying to hear what Legolas wished to say. Before the younger Silvan, the elder Silvan startled to have his Prince speaking so close to him.

Perhaps Varda could not grant Aragorn a painless death, but she or some compassionate being did grant the two lovers this – Estel heard Legolas. The Adan’s body stilled somewhat when Legolas said the man’s name; this Aragorn did by dint of sheer will, for he wanted to listen to the Silvan’s voice ere he died. In what sounded more to be a moan of pain than actual speech, Aragorn murmured back in relief, “My Greenleaf.”

Bittersweet joy made the laegel smile. “I am here, Estel. I am here. I love you, meleth nin. Now and beyond the Unmaking.”

Despite the shudders wracking his frame and the obvious, debilitating pain worsening with the Adan’s every breath, Estel smiled back. He opened his eyes, which had been tightly shut against the agony of his convulsing muscles, and looked up and around, until his silver eyes met the Elf’s cerulean eyes. _He can see me,_ the Wood-Elf realized when Aragorn’s gaze focused unerringly upon him. Legolas thought it must be possible only because the man was so close to death, but he welcomed it nonetheless.

“And I love you, Greenleaf,” Estel whispered back to him, ere another round of his muscles seizing caused the Ranger to groan and his eyes to slide shut against the agony once again.

The twins were now beyond mere sorrow, with Elladan running his hand through Estel’s wavy, chestnut hair, and Elrohir holding his human sibling’s hand against his heart. Wendt, Reana, and Liandra had wandered away a bit to allow the family some privacy, though all three would occasionally wipe at their eyes or sniffle quietly in sympathetic misery for the twins at the loss of Aragorn’s life; Tomas, Halbarad, and Jakob stood silent vigil behind the Noldor, watching as their Chieftain’s time ended in slow torment. Kalin remained by his Prince’s body, Legolas’ hand in his own, but kept his eyes upon Aragorn.

“We love you, brothers,” Elrohir said aloud both to Legolas and Estel. The younger twin – always the more emotional of the two – was having a hard time keeping himself together, but now, so was the elder, for Elladan could no more hide the anguish he felt to be losing both of the people they had chosen to accept into their hearts as brothers. Apparently, the twins had no further doubts about whether Legolas’ faer was with them in the field, for they spoke to him without any hesitation over if the Prince could hear them, with Elladan adding to his twin’s statement, “We will see you again, Greenleaf,” though he could not say the same for Aragorn.

Legolas could take no more. He abruptly realized he would not last until Estel died, not if he had to watch his lover perish and his friends grieve the loss. It startled the laegel when he felt a hand touch his own, but the small, timid digits of the Adan haunt intertwined with his, and despite her being the cause of all this distress, the Prince closed his eyes against the sight before him and found some solace in her touch. However, when he opened his eyes, he found himself no longer standing behind Kalin. In terror to have been taken away from his lover and friends and the potential of missing Estel’s end, the Wood-Elf whirled around to see where he was, only to find he was still in the field, but back to where he and Elise had been a few moments ago. He pulled his hand free of hers with all intentions of returning to his Ranger. Elise grabbed his hand again and yanked him to a halt.

“Tithen pen, please,” he beseeched the girl, his gaze upon Estel and his friends rather than Elise when he asked of her, “Let me go to him. Let me be with him now.”

“You’re just like my mum and da,” she answered. “They would never have wanted to be apart, either. They would have wanted the other to live without them, too, even if one of them died.” Intending to glance at the girl briefly, Legolas found Elise was no longer bawling and no longer as unhappy as before. He watched as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and then pulled up the neckline of her sackcloth dress to wipe at her nose. The same determined grimace came over her face as she had worn just before stepping into the fray between the villagers and Legolas’ companions. Nodding at the Elf, she told him, “I think it will work. I think he can still live.”

Confused, Legolas allowed her back into his arms as she stepped into him and hugged Legolas fiercely, her grip so tight upon his torso that had he the need for air, he would have found it hard to breathe. He had no clue as to what she meant or intended, but little could be worse than what was happening now, so he didn’t investigate further – he was too focused upon watching the throes of Estel’s excruciating death. Legolas remembered nothing of his own death save for the dreams he had experienced, but he knew he had not endured the pain under which Aragorn was thralled now. He wished he could trade places with the man, to suffer in Estel’s stead, but as with the others, watching was all he could do.

“Thank you,” Elise told the Elf in little more than a whisper. “Thank you for being my friend. And for seeing me. For listening to me. And for trying to help me. You’ve been the best friend I’ve ever had.”

He opened his mouth to ask her what she meant, to find out why she was speaking as if they were saying goodbye. Dawn was still a couple of hours away, so even should he not exist beyond the rise of Anor, there was time yet for him to stay with her, unless she was certain his faer would fade to join Námo soon. But as he looked down at her to question, she was gone and his arms held nothing but the empty air in front of him.

Searching around for her, Legolas at first feared she might have moved closer to Estel or one of his other friends. He could not forget how she had touched him to “help him,” thinking she was doing him a kindness in killing him to be with Estel. However, if she thought to help Estel by hurrying his death along, Legolas might thank her for it, since Estel currently only writhed in pain.

But then, the Silvan Elf spotted Elise.

She stood at the bonfire. The bodies of her little brother, mother, father, and grandfather were unrecognizable lumps amidst the logs and ashes there. Only her own small corpse remained, still inside the blanket in which he and Estel had wrapped her when finding her by the creek days ago.

To his knowledge, he was unable to go anywhere near the fire without forfeiting his faer, and so was reduced merely to calling out her name, “Elise!”

Although Legolas did not notice, his shout drew both Kalin and Estel’s attention, with the former looking frightened at the unease he heard in his Prince’s shout and the latter’s painful spasms easing from hearing his lover’s voice. As for Elise, while she looked at Legolas upon his call, the little girl only smiled gloomily and waved half-heartedly. She then went to her own corpse and began dragging it towards the fire.

 _What on Arda is she doing?_ the Prince wondered. He had some idea of what the girl might do, but after the awful situation in which he’d found himself since first seeing the haunt, Legolas could not allow himself to hope for it to be true.

“Son of a…” Jakob murmured firstly and then shouted to those around him, “Look!”

Having disturbed the quiet grieving of his fellow Rangers, the twins, and Kalin, Jakob did not care how he was the recipient of their bitter, disapproving glares for his indelicate, loud rudeness. As intended, though, Jakob’s shout drew the attention of everyone there, all of whom followed the man’s line of sight and the his pointed finger to watch as Elise’s body seemingly began to slide across the barnyard and to the bonfire. Only Legolas could see the owner of said body was the one moving it, her little face scrunched up in utter concentration. Even the twins were momentarily distracted from keeping watch over their Adan sibling’s death, though neither let go of the man.

“Is Legolas doing that?” Kalin asked everyone, but no one had an answer for the Silvan.

He had seen her move her cornhusk dolls, which had taken her great effort at the time. A short while ago, she had held Randric’s short sword aloft to keep it from rending Aragorn’s flesh. And now, she had progressed to moving a much heavier object. From the way in which she struggled, this was no easy feat for the girl, but it did not stop her. Elise pulled her corpse into the fire, the blanket trailing in the dirt of the barnyard like a train on a long dress. When she had her own body settled beside the unrecognizable, smoldering remains of her father, mother, baby brother, and beloved grandfather Emler, she stood there for a moment amidst the flames with no repercussions whatsoever. She looked down at her decayed and now igniting body, grabbed the hand upon which the splinter was embedded, and made sure it was amidst the hottest of the embers so it would burn soon.

In disbelief, Legolas was slow to admit to himself the reality of what he was seeing, _She is destroying herself. She is sending herself to the Halls of Awaiting, not knowing if it will break the curse upon Estel but doing it because she wants to make me happy. Because I am her friend._

Elise was suddenly standing before him with her sad smile still upon her face. “Do you understand what you have done, child?” he asked her incredulously as he reached out and laid his palm against her young, smooth, but ghostly cheek.

“I’m keeping my promise.” She held up her small hand – the one in which the splinter was caught. The pearlescent, tiny drop of blood hanging in perpetuity from the end of her forefinger shone like the flames of the bonfire that would soon consume this very finger and the splinter therein.

“Thank you, sweet child,” he told Elise.

She stepped into him and wrapped her arms around him. She felt so tiny against him, so young. So few in years that she had barely lived, she had already learnt more from her strange life in the past weeks than some adults would have learnt after years of experience. For weeks now, Elise had been taking from her village that which her childish heart told her she needed – companionship – but having been granted that by Legolas, she had come to see the true significance of friendship from the Elf’s love for Estel. In what likely would be her only chance to make a decision like an adult rather than with the natural greediness of a child, Elise had chosen to give rather than take by offering Legolas the chance for Estel to live, even though it assuredly meant her own destruction.

Slowly but surely, the Adan girl began to appear faint, the affected color that had made her appear like she had when alive began leeching from her until she was once again various shades of diaphanous, monochromatic nothingness. Her green eyes started to redden until they were once more the burning coals of before, and the tears she shed were fiery and left paths down her cheeks like they were made of molten metal. Legolas reached up to wipe a tear away where it clung to her chin, but the tear rolled off before he could touch it or her. The Elf heard a loud popping noise from the bonfire, turned to look at it, and turned back to Elise.

But the girl was gone.

 _It has burnt,_ he knew. _The splinter has burnt._

The Noldor, Silvan sentry, and Edain – including Aragorn – had all startled at the strange noise from the fire, as had Legolas. While they may not have realized immediately what had caused it, they all looked now to Estel with expectancy, for most of them were there when they had burnt the box, and thus had heard the same noise then.

 _Please, let this have removed the imprecation from Estel,_ he prayed, echoing the twins’ similar prayers, though none of the three Elves said anything aloud. The laegel walked closer to the semi-conscious Ranger, wanting to get near enough to see Aragorn’s face a final time, just in case Elise’s attempt to save the man did not work.

But before he could near the man enough to see his lover’s face, darkness tinted the edges of his vision, his thinking began to falter, and never aware of it, like a puff of pipe smoke might on the breeze, the Wood-Elf’s faer dissipated into the cool night air.


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been damn near a year since I started this story (three more days), and I was hoping to have it finished before now. I also thought it would be half the size it is already! Ah well. Enjoy!

Estel had not been at Legolas’ side when the Elf gained consciousness for the last time, when Legolas had said his goodbyes to Kalin and given the sentry his farewells to share with the rest of his loved ones, and when also the younger Silvan told the older Silvan about the box and splinter. Had he been there, Aragorn would have seen how Legolas’ body had convulsed with the physical symptoms of his faer disengaging from his rhaw. The same was happening to Aragorn, though he was too entrenched in its happening to think of why it was occurring. He knew only an intense but distant kind of pain – the likes of which he had never before felt, for it wasn’t an agony of his muscles or from some injury, but seemed to emanate concurrently from every part of his body. So great was this and so numbed was his body, he almost felt to be outside its influence.

As had Legolas experienced, the Ranger’s mind was trying very hard to distract him from the ordeal through which his body and soul suffered by offering him the placid, welcome memories he favored, the memories he thought of when most he felt depressed or alone. So confused was Aragorn as to what was real and what was not, the man was not entirely certain whether he had just spoken to and seen Legolas’ spirit, or if it was a part of the memory replaying for him, because both the reality occurring around him and the memory his mind supplied him were simultaneously a part of his awareness.

The reminiscence his mind chose for him in this dire time was a pleasant one, which served to relax his failing soul as it seceded from his body. In this recollection, the Adan was in the awkward age between childhood and manhood, when his gangly, growing body was advancing faster than was his innocent mind. For Estel, even at this young age, his heart was already set upon the Wood-Elf with him, though it would be years yet ere he realized he was in love with Legolas. The Adan and Silvan had been camping out by the river for a few days, where they swam, hunted, and foraged, living off the land as if they must, rather than by choice. It was the summer he and Legolas had stayed in the forest surrounding Imladris, going back to the Last Homely House only when it was necessary, which was very infrequently, much to Estel’s delight.

He and the Elf had just finished cooking and eating their supper of a brace of rabbits, with the two speaking of everything and nothing at all. In this memory, Legolas had told the young human about when he was around Estel’s age – relatively speaking – and of how he had yearned to go scouting and patrolling with his kith, how his father had kept him close to the Elvenking’s halls out of fear something would happen to Legolas as had happened to the Queen. As were most of Legolas’ stories when Aragorn was younger, the tale was a hidden lesson, one intended to offer Estel some succor for his grousing irritation about Elrond’s edict that the two not stray beyond the boundaries of Imladris – an edict intended to keep Estel safe within Elrond’s purview of protection over his realm, though Aragorn had not considered this at the time and truly thought he and Legolas were out in the wilds.

Even as the memory had replayed to him how Legolas strode towards him to hand him his bedroll, the haunt of Legolas had come forward to speak to the man. He did not know whether his seeing the Elf was true or some other memory confusing his harried mind, though he hoped it had truly been Legolas. So caught up in the baffling, dual influence from both his memories and what was happening around him had Aragorn been that he tried in vain to focus only upon Legolas speaking to him to tell the Adan how much he loved him. It had been the chance for which he had been praying – the chance to say goodbye to Legolas. He rued how short a time it had been and how he had not been given the opportunity to say all he had wanted to say to the Silvan.

While his thrashing and shuddering had looked extremely painful to those watching – including Legolas’ haunt, who because of the bond with his lover’s soul could had felt the agony through which Estel had undergone – Aragorn had not been suffering overly much. Yet, this was only because the numbness from Elise’s curse had spread so far over his body that he could feel very little. He had held Legolas’ body’s hand in his and had feared to lose hold of it; only the pressure of the Elf’s flesh against his own had told him he still held his lover’s limb. Because he had opened his eyes briefly, he had known his brothers were trying to comfort him with soothing touches, but he hadn’t felt these caresses made to his arms, legs, face, and hair.

Even in his tormented state, Estel had heard the very short-lived hiss from the fire, followed by an unbelievably loud bang – it had sounded just like the one made when they had destroyed Elise’s treasure box hours ago. Had the splinter been bigger, it might also have made a concussive wave of force, but being that it was small and no one was near the fire to feel it, anyway, only the sound the small scrap of wood had emitted when destroyed had given the Ranger, his brothers, and his friends any clue to conclude the last bit of Elise’s treasure box might have been incinerated.

And now, moments after the destruction of the splinter, the vestige of his reminiscence left him, while what was going on around him came into sharper focus. Aragorn’s wandering mind went utterly dark and his body absolutely still. This in itself was a relief to him, for the unbearably uncomfortable shivering wracking his body finally stopped.

While he did not pass out exactly, it was clear his brothers thought he had, for he heard Elladan say, “Thank Ilúvatar. He is out cold, I believe.”

“Thank Ilúvatar indeed,” Elrohir added quietly to his twin’s statement, his voice raspy from the weeping the Noldo could not stop. “At least he can die without suffering.”

“He is still breathing?” the Ranger heard Kalin ask. Even the Silvan sentry sounded distraught over Aragorn’s apparent, imminent death; or, perhaps the man’s death only served to remind the Elf of his Prince’s death, or frightened Kalin to think the only one thus far capable of sensing his Prince was to be lost to them. “He doesn’t look as bad as before. Perhaps the worst of it is over?”

“He breathes, yes,” Elladan answered. The twin did not sound pleased for this to be so; while it might have upset Estel to recognize his brother wanted his death, Elladan wanted only for the man not to suffer while dying, and so was merely upset at the thought of Aragorn’s living if it meant he might wake to undergo more pain before his end. “Yes, let us hope the worst is over now. If not, we may need to force him into drinking the milk of the poppy to ease his passing.”

In his fingers, Aragorn still held Legolas’ cold, lifeless hand. The Ranger was not entirely sure what had just happened, but it was clear something had caused the familiar, peculiar noise, and as the others claimed, Aragorn’s state was not as harrowing as prior to the sound from the fire. He tried to recall what had just transpired, though his dual perception of it all made his every attempt difficult. Aragorn recalled Jakob saying something before the loud popping noise in the bonfire – shouting for the others to look, he believed. The rest of the last half hour or so prior to the bang from the flames was vague, other than his Greenleaf’s brief appearance. He could not even recall when the others had lain him down on the ground.

 _Wait,_ Aragorn told himself when checking his body for injury and any lingering symptoms of Elise’s curse, not moving a muscle to do this but taking stock mentally. _Can it be? The numbness is gone._

Remaining motionless except for his increasingly steadier breathing, Aragorn went over every part of his body – one by one – and sought out the bizarre sensation of no sensation, the insensateness Elise had bestowed upon him with her algid touch. While the man was exhausted both physically and mentally, Aragorn no longer felt depleted, like he had before from the vitality of his soul having been siphoned away from the haunt’s imprecation. _The shivering has stopped, the numbness is gone, and I feel better, generally speaking,_ he realized before wondering, _The splinter. The splinter Greenleaf warned us of. Someone destroyed the splinter, surely._ Aragorn had meant to see it incinerated once the mob of villagers were gone, but had not had the chance, what with his declining faer’s insistence upon debilitating him so completely, so quickly.

Finally, his curiosity and desire to appease his brothers’ sorrow made Aragorn decide he was no longer dying, and thus, he opened his eyes, which startled his twin Elven brothers fiercely, for both were looking down upon their human sibling, their own eyes filled with the tears they let run down their identical faces freely in the expectation of never again seeing Aragorn’s silver eyes open in consciousness.

“Estel,” an astonished Elladan susurrated softly. Just as quietly and with the same shock, Elrohir uselessly added, “You’re awake.”

Blinking rapidly to try to make his eyes fix upon the Eldar hovering over him, Aragorn could tell from his brothers’ visages how they had already given him up for dead – not that he could blame them for it. Estel was no longer doomed to die, it seemed – a realization that should have pleased him, though he found he was only wholly perplexed.

“What happened?” he asked them in a voice gruff with enervation from his ordeal, though the discomfort itself was absent and Aragorn had some idea of what the answer to his question might be.

It was Jakob who responded to him, which drew Aragorn’s attention to just above his brothers’ shoulders, where all three of his fellow Rangers were standing in a vigilant watch for their Chieftain’s demise. Jakob was fretfully looping a braid of his beard around and around one finger; he looked towards the bonfire and then back to Estel, telling the man, “Something dragged Elise’s body into the flames. Legolas, I would suppose. And then we heard the same hiss and bang the box made when we burnt it,” he explained in wonder.

Halbarad moved closer so he was nearly pressed against Elrohir’s back to see better over the Elf’s shoulder. His bloodstained, silver hair shining in the moonlight, he agreed with Jakob, “It had to have been Legolas, right? It looked to us as if the body was moving on its own, but it had to be Legolas. He burnt her body, I’m sure of it,” the Ranger asserted, though his voice sounded anything but certain.

“The splinter,” Aragorn replied while trying to sit up.

Two sets of hands tried to keep him from doing so, but Estel was adamant that he not be lying down any longer. He wanted to check on Legolas.

“I’m fine,” he argued to Elladan and Elrohir, neither of whom believed him, and both of whom were waiting for an explication of Estel’s odd statement. In the end, his adamancy would not be denied and they helped him to sit rather than impede him. Aragorn took a deep breath to clear his mind and tried to explain what he thought had occurred, what he’d concluded a while back but not soon enough to save the Prince, “It was the splinter Greenleaf warned us about. Elise must’ve gouged herself with a splinter from the box in which she kept her treasures. We destroyed the box but the splinter still remained, and thus she still remained. Legolas burnt her to burn the last bit of the box, the last bit of the cursed wood Emler used to build the box.”

The Eldar and Rangers hovering around him looked to each other and at Estel, each of them making similar conclusions, and finding Aragorn’s explanation likely enough, wrong though they were in assuming Legolas was the one to have burnt the girl’s corpse. Aragorn tried to look towards the bonfire but could see little from so low to the ground; still, he imagined Elise’s corpse upon the fire, her sadly decomposing body charring and scorching. He could smell her body as it was incinerated by the flames. For all the destruction and pain she had brought her village, Estel, and Legolas, Aragorn still felt sorry for the little girl. And hatred. He hated her just as much for being the cause of Legolas’ death.

He scooted on his rear so he turned away from his brothers and faced Kalin and Legolas, instead. Taking up the Prince’s cold hand in his own once again, he lifted it to press against his cheek while asking the sentry, “How does Greenleaf fare?”

“The same as before.” Kalin had the other of the younger Silvan’s hands in his own, which he held to tightly. “But how do you fare, Estel?” the Elf asked the Ranger, eyeing Aragorn with curiosity, for it was clear the Adan was no longer shuddering and suffering as he had been moments ago ere the splinter was destroyed.

“I am fine, truly. I am fine,” he told Kalin. Shaking his head, Aragorn bent over Legolas, laid his cheek against the Prince’s mouth, and felt the slight, humid breath coming from between his lover’s lips. “I feel no more numbness, no shivers. It is gone. I think Greenleaf did it. I think he broke the curse.”

“Not soon enough to save himself.” Kalin smiled at Aragorn despite this morbid statement, his cheer to hear Estel say he was well not a forced cheer, but truly meant. “But he did it soon enough to save you. It was what my Prince wanted most – to save you. Can you still feel his presence?”

Laying his hand upon the Wood-Elf’s chilly forehead, the Ranger checked his lover’s temperature, only to find it lower than it had been earlier. That done, he concentrated upon trying to sense his lover’s spirit. All those around him waited for his answer, as all around him seemed to hold some hope that with the imprecation upon Aragorn apparently dissolved, perhaps too would be the curse upon Legolas dispersed, as well. Nothing was changed, to Aragorn’s sorrowful regret. Seeing Kalin’s optimistic face, Estel hated to bear the bad news to the sentry, but he was truthful nonetheless when he admitted, “I can feel him still, but only faintly. It is as if he has moved farther away from us, or as if he were fading.”

From behind him came the voice of Wendt, who with Liandra and Reana had come forward again to see for themselves the miracle of Aragorn’s apparent good fortune to be alive. The blacksmith crouched down at Legolas’ feet. He placed a hand upon the Prince’s calf, and to Aragorn’s surprise, Kalin did not lunge at the man to remove this mild, friendly touch from his charge. Wendt suggested, “You could hear him earlier, could you not? Call out for him to see if he answers.”

“Greenleaf!” the Ranger shouted stridently. Off in the copse of trees, some owl or other night bird was startled by Estel’s loudness and took off in a huff through the darkened night sky. “Greenleaf, answer me if you are near!”

The group of companions waited in absolute silence for a while, all of them staring at Kalin and Aragorn for some indication Legolas had responded. But the disappointment upon the Silvan and Adan’s face was enough for them to know the Prince said nothing. _Please Greenleaf,_ the Ranger pled to the Wood-Elf. _Please, just be near._ As it was, if he were right and the curse gone, then he would not die, and his short goodbye to the Elf the only one he was likely to have. _Of course, it was too much to ask for the curse’s removal to save Legolas, also,_ the embittered man ranted, wishing he could shout this at the Valar and Eru himself. _Could you not have saved him and let me die instead?_

After a few more moments, Wendt patted the Elf’s leg, sat back upon his haunches, and shook his head. To Kalin he said, “Your Prince saved not just Aragorn, but our lives, and the rest of the village, as well. Because of Randric’s foolishness, Legolas will receive little love from my kith for his sacrifice, but he has my respect, for what it is worth.”

Kalin gave the smith a smile of gratitude but did not reply, though it was obvious he was touched by Wendt’s words, for he looked down at his charge and his silent weeping freshened.

“Perhaps when he moved Elise’s body into the fire, the light cast his faer asunder, forcing him into the Halls of Awaiting,” Elladan provided as a potential explanation, which was a likely enough cause for Legolas not to answer, except it didn’t explain how Legolas killed the villagers attacking Estel when some of them had held torches.

Elrohir laid a hand on Aragorn’s shoulder and added, “Or perhaps, if Elise is truly gone, Legolas’ remaining as a haunt ended when Elise’s haunt was ended. We should be glad of it, for he can move on to the Awaiting.”

Neither explanation soothed the Ranger’s grief for his lover, of course, but he could only nod to his brothers’ suggestions. While relieved to be alive, this relief went only insofar as he had expected with his own curse lifted, Legolas’ might be lifted as well. And with this apparently not true, Aragorn found himself wishing he had died. _At least I was able to speak with him one last time,_ he tried to console himself. As he strained to recall those moments when he heard Legolas tell him how he loved him, the Ranger realized so much of the last half hour or so was too hazy, and thus Estel was already forgetting the way in which his lover had smiled down at him when he said his goodbye. It broke him to think that though he could never forget Legolas – not his smile or smell or the feel of his skin beneath the man’s hands – Estel might forget the last time he had been able to see his Silvan lover.

Halbarad cleared his throat, interrupting his Chieftain’s dismal contemplations. “If you are able to ride, and if the Prince is able, we should get going. Our welcome here is ended, I should say – at least for the time being.” Halbarad clapped Tomas on the back and nodded towards the horses, asking the younger Ranger, “Are we prepared?”

Tomas, who spoke little and only when he must, nodded in affirmation. Estel agreed with Halbarad’s eagerness and assured his worried brothers, “I am able to ride. I swear to you,” he oathed upon seeing their reluctance and disbelief, “I am fine. Let us be away from here in case the mob gathers more strength and comes back for us. I do not want any more of the villagers to die, nor have Legolas’ body in jeopardy of being set afire again.”

The twins relented, for if more villagers came back to avenge the dead men lying only feet away from where the brothers sat, their motley group of companions would truly need to kill to leave this place, and neither Legolas nor Elise likely existed any longer to aid them this time. Kalin jumped to his feet and without debate, the sentry took Arato’s lead to bring the stallion over to where his Prince laid on the ground. The horse acted strangely by trying to lower his head down low enough to nuzzle the Prince’s face, though Kalin attempted to keep the lead tight in hand and thus not allow the horse to disturb his charge. Aragorn stood, intending to help hand the Prince’s body up to Kalin, but the twins gently pushed him from the way. He would have argued to be allowed to ride with his Elven lover himself, but knew the Silvan sentry and his own brothers would not allow it, for they would fear his exhaustion would cause him to drop Legolas. As tired as he felt, he knew it was a valid concern.

 _I think he knows Legolas is gone,_ the Adan mused in melancholy mourning as he watched Arato’s strange behavior. While his brothers together picked up the Prince, Aragorn rubbed Arato’s nose tenderly, wishing to console the horse. He distracted Arato while the twins settled Legolas before Kalin on the saddle. The sentry wrapped his arms around his Prince’s waist to pull him flush to his chest, adjusted Legolas’ head to lie against his shoulder such that his broken ribs wouldn’t be cinched by the position, and then removed one hand momentarily to grab the reins. Estel gave Arato’s nose a final pat. _At least he is calmed with his master riding him,_ the Ranger considered of the horse, who had stopped his antics now Legolas was astride him.

“Are you sure you can ride, brother? Why don’t you ride with me?” Elladan asked of Estel while he took him by the arm to lead him to where the other horses waited.

Impulsively, Aragorn stopped walking, grabbed hold of Elladan, and hugged his Elven brother securely. It took only a second for Elrohir, who had been walking just behind them, to add his own arms to this brotherly embrace, and the three siblings took comfort from each other for a short while. As he pulled away, Estel promised, “I am well to ride. I promise you. I am tired, but otherwise fine.”

Always had Aragorn responded to his brothers’ concern with flippancy. To have him now be serious in his response to their care convinced Elladan and Elrohir more than could his impertinence have done. Both Noldor nodded; Aragorn chose one of the village’s horses and climbed on. Once settled, he waited until the rest of his companions did the same. Elrohir was the last to do so, for he went over the clearing to ensure nothing was left behind, and secured the last bit of their belongings – the Prince’s long knife, which they had overlooked – onto Arato, ere he mounted his own horse.

 _There will be time for grief later,_ he told himself as he watched Kalin adjust his Prince again to ensure the laegel would not be in pain whilst riding, even though it was highly unlikely Legolas could feel it.

Having walked to this village with Legolas, Estel would have had to ride with someone else, had not they taken the horses from the stables the day before with the intent of letting the Noldor and Ranger’s mounts rest. But since Tomas and Halbarad had brought the Noldor’s mounts and their own horses, and since Liandra had ridden her mare to the farm, there was a horse for everyone – including for Legolas, who could have ridden Arato alone were he capable. Instead, they placed the majority of their satchels upon one of the village’s dray horses. It didn’t sit well with Estel to take anything from the village, but at the moment, they needed the extra horses, and perhaps also, the villagers owed the Rangers and Eldar a token of appreciation, when thus far this night they had only received vitriol and violence.

They may not have ended Elise. There was truly no way to be certain, especially not now when the only person who had been able to see the girl – Legolas – was gone. In the end, however, Halbarad was right, and their welcome in this settlement overstayed. Besides, by Aragorn’s thinking, they could do nothing else, should burning the splinter not have destroyed Elise or at least severed the tether holding her to Arda. Time would tell.

 _If your faer still lingers, Greenleaf, follow us, my love, please,_ he beseeched the Elf. They could not stay here, but Estel did not want to go. With a few hours left before the sun rose, he felt there was still time left to speak to or see his lover again, if the Elf’s spirit was still amongst them. Indeed, the Ranger’s conscience weighed heavily upon him, encumbering his already overburdened mind and heart, for Legolas had died to save him, just as the Prince had promised he would by doing whatever it took to see the man safe, and now, they may very well be abandoning the laegel during the last hours of his existence upon Arda. He could only hope the Wood-Elf could forsake this awful area, perhaps so because they took his body. Even if Legolas could not, he knew the Prince would understand their desire to leave, as the valiant Prince would never want for his friends and lover to remain in danger just for him. _Meleth nin, come with us,_ he thought again and reluctantly put his heels to his horse to urge it to follow the others.

As they rode away from the farm – or what was left of the farm, that is – Estel glanced back at it. He eyed the smoldering remains of the house, the barn, and the bonfire, whereon the family’s bodies still burnt. He looked back to the pile of dead villagers, who would need to be buried by their kin, should not the superstitious villagers insist upon incinerating these corpses as they had Wendt’s family. _All this destruction, all this death and heartache because of one man’s greed and a little girl’s curiosity and loneliness._ Even as he laid the blame on Emler and Elise, Aragorn found plenty of blame remaining to settle upon his own shoulders, however, for he knew there was no excuse for it – Legolas was dead because of him.  

Liandra and Wendt wordlessly joined in with the others as they rode towards the copse, and then followed the limestone fence, meaning they stayed in the field for a ways until an opening in the fence line, where the stones had fallen in disrepair, allowed them to exit the field onto the wagon-rutted road running alongside the creek. Here, Liandra pulled her horse to a halt, which caused the others to stop, as well.

“It is time I returned home,” the elderly woman announced. “I have a lot of explaining to do.”

When Liandra began to swing her leg over the saddle to dismount, Elladan hopped off his horse to help her. To the Noldo’s surprise, she took hold of him and hugged him tightly; Elladan paused only a moment before he returned the hug just as fiercely. She waited expectantly for the rest of them to dismount to receive the same farewell, which they all did gladly. One by one, Liandra embraced each of their group – Tomas, Jakob, Halbarad, and Estel, and then Reana and Elrohir.

Being that he held his Prince before him, Kalin did not dismount, so Liandra came to the two Silvan. She patted Kalin’s thigh and told him, “I’m sorely sorry about your Prince. He was a noble one, to have given his life to save our village.”

The praise was well received by Kalin but it brought tears to the sentry’s eyes, and as with Wendt’s commendation, Kalin could not find words to reply. Liandra understood, nevertheless, and she merely gave Kalin’s leg another motherly pat ere she did the same for Legolas’ leg, telling the soulless Prince’s body, “May you find peace in the Awaiting.”

Tears running down her aged face, the elderly woman hugged herself now, her arms wrapped around her generous bosom, ere she nodded to some internal thought. She looked out at the creek, back to the copse from which they had come, and then to the road she would soon travel in her return home. To Aragorn, it seemed the woman didn’t want to leave them just yet, despite her insistence it was time for her to go.

“I would say we will meet again, but I doubt any of us ever being welcome in this village again,” Jakob told Liandra with some regret.

Although Aragorn had only passed through the settlement once, when meeting Wendt for the first time years ago to have his horse shoed, Tomas, Halbarad, and Jakob regularly passed through this village, as did some of the other Rangers, who might also find themselves unwelcome despite having nothing to do with the current imbroglio.

“Not everyone here is a bigoted twit,” the elderly healer replied without heat. The healer was right, of course, and Estel, along with everyone else, knew it well. The villagers who had come to confront the Eldar and Rangers at the farm were the ones whose distrust and contempt were easily roused, helped by homemade brews, no doubt, and spurred by Randric’s hatefulness. She assured them, “Don’t worry. I will make certain everyone hears the truth about what happened this night. No one will seek you out for vengeance, I swear it,” she promised, though it rang somewhat hollow to those who had been a part of the short-lived battle fought between them and the villagers. However, if anyone could convince the Edain in this settlement of the truth of the matter, it would be Liandra. The woman had proven invaluable to them.

“Say true. And perhaps fewer of them will be keen to show their intolerance after tonight,” Halbarad interjected. The elder Ranger shook his head in disappointment. “I regret not being able to say farewell to the women who stayed in the schoolhouse with me and Jakob. They are good women, good people, and they took good care of me and Jakob.”

Liandra walked to Halbarad and again hugged the man, while offering, “I will give them your gratitude. You are right. They are all good women, each one of them, and none of them will hold any grudge against what happened on the farm this past night. Not even Renetta. She knew her brother was a mean one.”

Estel was compelled to hug the woman again, and this time, she kept Aragorn in her sturdy arms for a while longer than the first time. He told her, “Thank you for your assistance, Liandra. We could not have done this without you.”

“I only wish we had found a way to save your friend,” she replied, going a step further and kissing Estel on his cheek. When she pulled back and out of his arms, she gave them all a grave smile. “Thank you for coming to our aid. You Rangers, and you Elves, will always be welcome here. Just give it a few months before you come back, will you?” she suggested with another brief smile of dark humor. “What of you, Wendt? Are you not coming back with me?” she asked the blacksmith.

As he seemed to do whenever thinking or nervous, Wendt pulled off his leather cap, pushed back his thickly spiraled hair, and replaced his cap firmly upon his head. “Not just yet. Maybe not at all. I think I will ride along with these good men and help them bury their friend, at least, while I ponder it.”

Liandra understood the blacksmith’s wariness to return to their village so soon and did not argue. And with that, Elrohir gladly aided the woman back onto her horse; they all remained unmoving while watching the elderly woman ride off along the road, which she would follow to the juncture where this path met the main road running through the village. Now with Elise gone, or so they anticipated, Liandra could ride safely in the early morning hours, at least, without fear of being killed by the haunt.

_I am glad she was on our side for this. We sorely needed her to keep peace in the village, and had she not thought to speak to Wendt, we may never have learnt about the cellar and Emler’s stolen items._

“Where are we going?” Jakob asked of them. There had been no talk of a destination, no consensus, but of course, the Noldor, Silvan, and Estel had intended to ride towards Imladris eventually.

Mounting his horse, Estel knew just where he wanted for them to go – back to the lake where he and Legolas had taken their ease for weeks. There, they could restock their supplies with hunting and fishing, have plenty of water and space, with relative safety, and wait for Legolas’ rhaw to die. It would also be a fine place in which to bury the Ranger’s lover – one easily found again, should Thranduil or someone wish to return to pay their respects to the Prince’s final resting place. Perhaps also, the man considered, should Legolas be able to follow them – and he thought it possible since he could still feel his lover’s presence – then Legolas may find them there easily enough, if his faer did not disappear upon the coming of Anor.

Before anyone else could come up with his own ideas, Aragorn suggested, “Let us go to the lake where Greenleaf and I stayed before coming here.”

The others agreed to Estel’s proposal, probably just to please the man whose lover sat dying astride his horse, and so they all mounted and crossed the creek to be on their way.

As the water splashed under the hooves of his horse, Estel begged Legolas once more, _If you are still here, Greenleaf… if you have not moved on to the Halls of Awaiting, then follow us, please._

Aragorn wasn’t sure why he felt it so important for the Silvan to come with them. Legolas was lost to him forever, he knew, but the Ranger was not yet willing to lose the comforting presence of his beloved Wood-Elf just yet.


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a small time jump so I thought it best to post this as a short chapter and leave the second half, where the time jump is, to the next chapter. Hey, happy birthday to this story. It turned a year old on the seventh! 
> 
> Have a good week, and enjoy.

They rode mostly in silence towards the lake, with Aragorn giving them occasional directions to keep them on the general path. Being that he and Legolas had followed deer trails and wandered vaguely southwest rather than making a direct path from the lake to the village, and because the Elf and Ranger had been on foot, it had taken them a full day’s walk to arrive in the settlement. Estel believed that with a direct route and on horseback, they should arrive at the lake well before nightfall. But the first obstacle was the coming dawn, which approached much faster than Aragorn liked. For the Adan, the sunrise was usually a wondrous and anticipated event, especially on a hard-lived night such as the one through which he and his companions had survived. But the rise of Anor brought the sun’s bright light, and should Legolas’ faer still persist, it would surely dissipate. Aragorn did not imagine his lover’s body would survive much longer once the Elf’s faer was entirely gone.

 _I wonder if I am not merely imagining Greenleaf’s presence,_ he considered with unwilling practicality. His twin brothers had told him the evening before – when first he had claimed to feel Legolas’ spirit nearby – how they thought the man was conjuring up the sensation of the Silvan’s faer’s nearness because Aragorn’s grief would not accept the Elf’s death. He had known this to be false over the course of the night, but now, he could not again extirpate this implanted doubt so easily. _If Kalin can no longer feel him, and we can no longer hear him if Legolas has tried to speak to us, then the absolution of Elise’s imprecation has likely weakened Greenleaf’s faer to the point of negligibility. He may have truly faded,_ the Ranger worried. He knew he should be pleased for Legolas to have the chance to go to the Halls of Awaiting rather than be trapped on Arda – whether with Elise or alone – cursed to remain as a haunt until The End, but Aragorn could not yet grieve his lover’s passing when the tiniest sliver of hope remained for him to speak to the Elf one more time. _I was dying before. I saw him and spoke to him when I was dying. If this was the only reason I was able to do so, then why could Kalin hear him?_ he questioned, knowing he had no answers, but supposing anyway, _Unless Kalin heard his Prince because his own faer was relinquishing its hold in grief over Legolas’ passing. But then, wouldn’t Kalin still be able to hear Greenleaf, since his Prince’s body is still to die and Kalin still mourning the loss?_ The Adan rubbed his tired eyes, his sore forehead, and ran a hand down his face, hissing as he forgetfully pestered the open but cleaned wound made by the hoe of one of the villagers who had attacked him. He wiped the unguent off his hand onto the thigh of his trousers, glad one of the twins had not seen his carelessness, lest they mother him over bothering his wound.

As he had numerous times during their short while riding, Aragorn looked around him, peering in between the trunks of the trees, into the underbrush and scattered foliage, both before and behind him, in search of some sign Legolas was near. It was a habit he could not seem to force himself into breaking, despite his realization he would not see the Elf – perchance ever again, short of his own death before dawn came. And since his own soul was relieved of Elise’s curse, Aragorn’s chances of dying suddenly ere sunrise were slim.

 _I am sorry, meleth nin,_ he thought to Legolas, wanting to say it aloud just in case the Elf was about and able to hear him, but not wanting to open this topic of conversation to his companions and brothers, who would deny the Ranger’s culpability, he knew. Aragorn held himself responsible, though, and would until the end of his life. _I should never have insisted we travel the wilds while you were still recovering from Mithfindl. I should never have insisted we make for the village. I should have argued against you going with Jakob to search out the haunt that night, or come with you to protect you,_ he chastised himself. Not in his ears but in his mind, Aragorn could practically hear Legolas’ argument against Estel’s thoughts, for the Wood-Elf would have told Estel how he was no child needing Aragorn’s protection or permission. While this was true, it did not matter a whit to the Adan.

The others rode mostly in single file, for there was no true path except the deer tracks they currently followed. Elladan, who led their procession, picked out the best course and everyone else trailed behind with tired eagerness to be as far from the farm and settlement as possible. However, Aragorn did his best to remain beside Kalin to keep watch over the Prince, who occupied Estel’s every thought. A few minutes ago, Kalin had asked Estel for information of their destination after Aragorn had suggested to the Silvan how the lake was indeed a fine place to bury the sentry’s Prince. Estel had taken his time in telling Kalin of the peacefulness and beauty of the lake, over which Kalin was now broodily pondering.

The Wood-Elf broke the silence and Aragorn’s dismal contemplation to ask the man, “Will the lake be easy to find again? I do not know if my King will wish to come visit the Prince’s grave, but I would make it as easy as is feasible for Thranduil to do so if he wishes. And if it is practical, when my own time is come, once I have kept my promise to Legolas,” he told Aragorn, referring to his oath to his Prince to protect Estel as he had protected Legolas, “or should I fall in battle one day, then I will want to return to the lake,” he declared, implying he would wish to be buried near his Prince, and thus his body would come back to the area.

Although not intentionally morbid, Kalin’s reminder to the man of how the sentry intended to let his faer fade at the soonest possible time – currently upon Aragorn’s death, because of his promise to his Prince – hurt the Adan to hear. He wasn’t pleased with Legolas’ imploration of Kalin to be the human’s protector as he had once been his Prince’s guardian, but he knew why his Greenleaf had done it; Legolas had wanted to give Kalin some impetus to continue so Kalin may have the opportunity to live and heal between the interval after his charge’s death and the end of his keeping of the oath Legolas had requested of him. Perhaps, if given enough time, by then Kalin may have found some other reason for persisting and may not release his faer so readily.

“I believe it will be easy to find again. The lake is rather large, actually, and while there are no people living around it because it is too close to the potential danger of the mountains, it is certainly visible from the foothills. Besides, if nothing else, I will lead Thranduil to Legolas’ grave,” the Adan suggested, the offer of which caused Kalin to look at the man strangely, likely because Kalin wondered at Aragorn’s sanity if he thought to be in Thranduil’s company after the King learnt his son had died while aiding Estel in his duties as a Ranger. Aragorn speculated of his saneness, as well, but he was prepared to endure the Elvenking’s anger as penance for his own perceived fault. He leant over, clearing the space between him and Kalin, to adjust Legolas’ leg, for it had been hanging oddly and bouncing against Arato’s side. The man added quietly, “Greenleaf and I created many good memories at this lake. It is the nearest, best place to bury him. I wish we could take him home to the Greenwood, but Legolas would not want for us to burden ourselves with this task.”

The sentry nodded, apparently appeased the lake would be a suitable place to inter his Prince but also in agreement of how Legolas would not want for his friends to cart his corpse on such a journey, imperiling themselves in doing so; besides which, Legolas’ friends and lover would be forced to watch the Prince’s body decay in the weeks it would take to get him the Mirkwood, should they try, and none of them wanted to see their beloved friend as his rhaw wasted away. For Aragorn, the lake represented that which he had desired the most for Legolas and for himself – it was at the lake where he and Legolas had found unfettered happiness, with no one to judge or question them about their relationship, pester Legolas over his health or sorrow, beleaguer Aragorn with fears over what should happen to Legolas come his own death, with the two lovers in good health and good cheer, and all the while, the Elf’s faer had remained optimistic, rather than riddled with the sorrow having plagued him for months.  

 _I suppose I should be glad we had at least those few weeks to spend together,_ he told himself, the consolation leaving a nasty taste in his mouth, _because we could have had none at all._ His hand lingered upon Legolas’ thigh, which he unselfconsciously massaged under Kalin’s watchful gaze. Upon this very thigh had lain the malicious mar, which at one point in time had housed all of the Prince’s odious opinions for himself. He ran his hand down the Silvan’s thigh, to his knee, and then back up until his fingers met the juncture where Legolas’ thigh met his torso. When he noticed the sad smile upon Kalin’s grieved visage, Aragorn removed his hand and turned his attention back to the sky to gauge how long they had before the coming of daybreak. Gentle, diffuse, reddish gold light began illuminating the woods around him. Sunrise on this side of the Misty Mountains sometimes took forever – or so it felt – with Anor not actually visible until it ascended above the mountain range, even though it was morning already. _It is time,_ he had no more than thought when Kalin halted Arato in response to the slowdown of the others in front of them.

Without consulting each other, the twins and Reana, all of whom rode in the front most of the line, had stopped their convoy as the sun finally began to emerge over the steep and magnificent Misty Mountains in the east. Being they were all fairly certain if Legolas’ faer had not yet gone to the Halls of Awaiting that it now would, they did not want to be riding should the Silvan’s rhaw follow suit and perish immediately upon this happening. And so, everyone halted and began to dismount to rest for a while, with Elrohir and Elladan coming to retrieve Legolas from off Arato to allow Kalin to dismount. Giving a groan of exhausted soreness, Aragorn dismounted to hold again Arato’s reins to keep the stallion calm while the twins heaved the Prince’s slight weight from off the saddle. Quick to release Arato’s lead to be of aid to Legolas, Aragorn pulled his own bedroll from his borrowed horse and chose an area under a beech tree where the ground was covered in fallen leaves. Between the identical brothers, they carried their Silvan friend and settled Legolas down on the bedroll Aragorn quickly spread out for this very purpose, and a moment thereafter, both Estel and Kalin sat down beside the Prince to wait.

The Wood-Elf guard began fiddling with his charge’s rhaw, fixing how he laid so his unfeeling, unaware body would be comfortable. Because Kalin had cut off Legolas’ tunic and undershirt to cheek for burns earlier, the younger Silvan wore only the binding around his ribs from the waist up; since Legolas’ skin was ice cold anyway, it was unlikely to help, but Kalin drew his cloak over his Prince to try to keep his body warm. While Kalin did all this devoted fussing, Estel grabbed for Legolas’ hand to hold in his own. After a few more moments of affectionate meddling, Kalin was finally satisfied his Prince’s body was comfortable, and so, as he had several times while riding, the sentry again asked the Adan, “Do you still feel him?”

“I do, but as before, he is faint,” Estel admitted, wishing he could say he felt the Prince strongly, but knowing in the end it would not matter. Bringing Legolas’ hand up to his mouth, the man held his lover’s knuckles against his lips.

It seemed Kalin expected nothing more than this; not even the indomitable sentry could drum up any hope for his Prince this morning. Nearby, Halbarad searched through their bags until he found enough food for everyone to have something to break their fast and handed out rations to each. Perfunctorily, everyone ate what they were given with no relish for the meager fare. Waterskins were passed around, as well, and once done, the companions sat in the by now bright sunlight with little conversation – likely out of respect for the Wood-Elf whose body had not yet relinquished its last breath, not yet knowing the faer to which it belonged was most likely gone. One by one, everyone wandered off to relieve themselves except for Kalin and Estel, neither of whom were keen to leave Legolas’ side for a single moment.

Even between the dense trees of the forest, Aragorn could see Anor above the mountaintops. Wordlessly, Kalin pleaded for a response to the question he had been asking all morning, and wordlessly, Aragorn nodded. He could feel the Prince’s faer still.

When Wendt came back from his own answering of nature’s call, he crouched down beside Kalin and asked, “Legolas is the same?”

“Yes. He is breathing and Estel feels his presence, even though the sun has risen,” Kalin responded in disbelief. Placing his hand upon his charge’s forehead, the sentry checked the temperature of Legolas’ skin and found it too cold as it had been for hours, though because of the sunlight, the younger Silvan was warming up a little.

“Is that good news or bad news?” the blacksmith asked, but neither sentry nor Ranger replied, for neither knew what to think of it.

A few steps away, Tomas and Jakob were giving the horses water out of a tin bucket, while Halbarad and Elladan were discussing their plans for after the lake, and Elrohir was rubbing liniment upon a bruise Reana had sustained from blocking with her forearm a blow from a torch, one that had been meant for Elrohir during their scuffle with the villagers. Thus far, Wendt had been following the Elves and Rangers without offering much of his reasoning for doing so, save for his telling Liandra he wished to help them bury Legolas.

To pass the time, Aragorn asked his fellow Adan, “Will you return to the village when we are done at the lake?”

Wendt plopped down from his crouch to sit fully on his arse beside Kalin. The man’s large and muscled frame heaved a sigh. “My mother and father left the village when Halbarad suggested anyone able should do so. They went across the river to Mum’s sister’s house. They had planned to go there for good to live anyway, before winter came, so the business in the village only hastened their plans.” Wendt shifted his long legs before him, and then rested his elbows on his knees with his chin in his hands. “With Jenafer and her family dead, there’s not much left for me in the village, save for my anvil and what I have in my house, but even that isn’t much. I sent anything of value with my Mum and Da in case they needed to sell it for them to get settled. Neither one is able to work these days and I’m their sole support. I’m not sure I want to go back to making horseshoes and shovels for people who wanted to kill me for preferring men to women, but I’m also not keen to go somewhere else to start again. At least I don’t have to worry about moving Mum and Da, though wherever I go, as long as I can send them word and some coin every now and again, I should be fine.”

Aragorn could well understand the man’s position and once again realized how lucky he was to have been raised and call his permanent residence an Elven realm where being a man preferring men was not enough to cause one’s kith to turn upon him. He looked to where the twins were now sitting together, putting their belongings away, though sensing their human brother’s regard, they simultaneously looked at him. He wished he had spoken to his siblings of this prior to now; they had heard his and Wendt’s conversation and perhaps they knew what Estel intended, for both nodded slightly to the Adan, as if giving their encouragement for Aragorn’s idea.

Thus, the Ranger offered Wendt, “You could come to Imladris with me and my brothers. There is plenty of work for a blacksmith there, and no judgment against preferring men to women. At least until you’ve decided what to do next.”

His black eyebrows high upon his forehead, Wendt’s surprise caused him to look years younger. The smith tugged his cap down snugly upon his head to buy a moment of time to think ere he finally replied, “That is a most kind offer. And very tempting. Let me consider it.”

Estel nodded. He wouldn’t mind the blacksmith travelling with them to the valley, nor would he mind if Wendt remained in Rivendell, and he was certain his father would welcome the valiant man into his household. While at first Aragorn had not liked Wendt because of the man’s interest in Legolas, Wendt had proven himself to the Rangers and Eldar with his willingness to fight upon the side of what was right and noble, and though not a warrior as were they, he would fit in with the Imladrians so long as he was willing to earn his keep.

The sun was now high enough in the sky for the chill of the night’s autumn air to begin to be chased away. Around him, his companions were preparing to depart again. The constant glances towards Legolas showed Aragorn how they wanted to ask Estel if he felt the Silvan Prince’s presence any longer, but so far, no one had done so. He knew they could linger here no longer, for they were not far enough away from the village to feel safe. It was time to move on, to keep going until they reached the lake.

“Estel?” Elladan prompted the man, who looked up to find his brothers standing at Legolas’ feet, gazing down at the Silvan and Ranger. Elrohir continued, “Shall we go?”

Latent in this query was the question upon everyone’s mind; he announced loud enough for all of them to hear so all would realize, “Greenleaf’s faer lingers, yes, while his body is still living.”

Neither twin responded to this, but Aragorn could see upon their identical faces how Elladan and Elrohir were not pleased to learn this. They no more wanted to lose the Wood-Elf than did Aragorn or Kalin, but neither held any hope at all for Legolas’ faer to return to his rhaw; that the Prince’s faer was not yet moved on to the Halls of Awaiting only meant one of two things for the twins – either it signified Legolas was trapped upon Arda, despite whether Elise’s soul was forced to go by the breaking of the curse upon her, or it meant their human brother’s grief-stricken mind was confusedly sensing the Prince’s presence because he could not fathom losing Legolas. Either situation was a calamitous one to the twins. But they bowed their heads in acceptance of this, Wendt and Kalin stood, and reluctantly, Aragorn accepted Wendt’s aid in climbing to his own feet to be off once again.

Estel was both gladdened and worried over how he sensed his lover’s presence; it had not faded any more than before, nor was the Silvan’s body failing as they had expected. _Dawn has come, the sun will continue to climb in the sky, and we will ride on – but what of Greenleaf?_

He absentmindedly listened to the twins and Kalin discussing riding arrangements. To give Arato a break from carrying two riders, Elladan suggested Legolas ride with him for a while, and grudgingly, Kalin agreed, with he and Elrohir bending over to carry the Prince to where Elladan was waiting upon his horse for Legolas’ body to be handed up to him. However, when Arato noticed his master being lugged away to a different horse, the stallion began to toss his head, snort, and gnash his teeth in aggravation. At once, Aragorn sprinted to the stallion and did his best to calm Arato, but try though he did, the Adan nearly ended up kicked for his efforts. Meanwhile, Kalin was losing his composure right along with the Prince’s stallion. He and Elrohir were beside Elladan’s mount, Kalin hesitating in handing Legolas up to the Noldo, with his eyes upon where Arato began bucking against Estel’s attempts to keep him pacified.

“We can’t,” the Silvan sentry told the Noldor. He hefted Legolas to regain the grip he was losing upon his charge’s shoulders. “No. Just let him ride with me before Arato kills someone.”

It might have been a joke on a different day, but this morning, there was nothing funny about it; in fact, Kalin was not exaggerating in the least. Elladan slid off his horse and took Legolas from Kalin, while the sentry nearly ran to Arato. Even with Aragorn holding the stallion’s reins and Kalin speaking to the horse in Sindarin, nothing would soothe the stallion until he saw the twins approach with his master held between them. Arato continued to buck even as Kalin climbed into the saddle, though he ceased his agitation the very moment Elrohir and Elladan were at his side with Legolas. Seeing his beloved master was to ride him, Arato calmed immediately and became utterly placid; more surprisingly, for no one had ever seen Arato do such a thing, the stallion bent his front legs to lower his back to make it easier for the twins to place Legolas before Kalin upon the saddle.

With a final pat to Arato’s nose, Estel told the stallion, “You and me both,” which earned him a bump to the shoulder from Arato’s head.

Aragorn gave Kalin the reins. The sentry was smiling in relief to be holding his charge and mild amusement at Arato’s antics, but tears glittered in his blue eyes as he looked down to Estel. Before the Ranger walked away to his own mount, Kalin’s smile withered upon his face when he whispered to Aragorn, “When Legolas’ rhaw dies, we may have to put Arato down, or release him. He will not be fit to ride ever again.”

Though he nodded at Kalin to show he heard the Silvan, the human could not find it in himself to ponder this any further. It was true, more than likely. Arato was so enamored with his master that the stallion would become irate upon the very utterance of his master’s name when his master was not near. What might happen when the Silvan’s body died, Estel could only guess, but he did not doubt Arato would go bestially mad with grief. To have to put the stallion down or release him just to keep themselves safe – well, Legolas would understand their need of doing it but the Wood-Elf would not be pleased.

He climbed onto his own borrowed horse – which was little more than a young mare accustomed more to pulling drays or plows rather than long journeys – and nudged it into step beside Arato. This time, the Rangers rode in front and the Elves in back, with Kalin and Estel once more in the middle.

As earlier, the procession remained mostly silent as they travelled, leaving the Ranger the unwanted quietude to return to his task of laying blame. Legolas’ death was his fault, he knew, and he would never forgive himself for it. _If only I hadn’t brought Greenleaf along. If only I had just gone to Mirkwood with Legolas and Thranduil, then Greenleaf would be safe at home right now. If I had gone with Jakob and Legolas, or instead of Jakob, Greenleaf would never have been touched by Elise that night. Or if I had known he was using his own faer’s light to keep me alive, I could have stopped him and Greenleaf’s life would have been extended. He might have burnt Elise’s body before his faer ever fled his rhaw._ Estel would drive himself mad by wondering ‘what if,’ but the Ranger could not seem to stop, and one after another, more ‘what ifs’ came to him as the morning wore on closer to midday. _If I had insisted we stay at the lake, or not insisted we come to the village to find answers. If only I had suggested we ride straight to Bree. If I had just kept Greenleaf safe…_

So deep in thought was Estel that he took no notice of how he allowed his horse to lag behind where he had been riding beside Kalin. Seeing their human brother lost in his thoughts and perceiving just what self-recriminations were running through the man’s mind, Elladan and Elrohir diverted their horses to catch up to the human and then moved to ride on either side of him. He did not even notice this until Elrohir suddenly spoke up, saying, “Estel. Stop.”

At first, he thought Elrohir was asking him to halt his horse, and he was instantly petrified Legolas might have died in Kalin’s arms without his realizing it. And yet, he could still feel his lover’s presence and though the sentry now rode a short distance ahead, Kalin had not stopped and did not seem upset, so the Ranger looked to Elrohir in confusion.

“Stop blaming yourself,” came Elladan’s voice from the other side of Aragorn. Since everyone believed Legolas was the one to have killed the villagers and burnt Elise’s body, it came naturally for the Noldo to claim, “Greenleaf did what he thought he must. Kalin was right yesterday when he said Legolas is no child and he chooses what he believes is right. He chooses what he wants. He chose this.”

“Greenleaf wanted most for you to be alive and well. He chose to do whatever it took to see this accomplished,” Elrohir went on to say, with the twins doing as they often did by speaking as if they were one mind with two voices.

Finding it difficult to face his brothers, Aragorn looked down to the pommel of the saddle, instead. It did not keep him from hearing plainly, obviously, but he did not acknowledge the twins when Elladan concluded, “It is useless for you to blame yourself for Legolas’ choices. Moreover, he would not want it.”

Of course, all this was the very reasoning behind Aragorn’s upset. Legolas’ life had been worth more to Estel than his own life. He did not think thusly because the Silvan had been an Elf who was supposed to have been immortal, but because Aragorn wanted the same for Legolas as Legolas had wanted for Estel; that is, for the other to be healthy and well, to live a long and happy life – hopefully with each other, but if they had to do it alone, then each wanted for the other to survive and prosper.

“Besides, brother,” Elrohir warned the man without sarcasm or rancor, maneuvering his horse closer to Aragorn’s mount and reaching his hand out to lay upon the Adan’s shoulder, “Thranduil will have enough culpability to lay upon you. I dread to think what will happen when he finds out Greenleaf is dead.”

“He will no doubt fault you, though he shouldn’t, and nor should you blame yourself,” the elder twin reiterated, doing as was his twin by bringing his horse close enough for Elladan to lay a hand upon the other of the Ranger’s shoulders.

What had started off as the twins trying to soothe their human brother’s hate for himself had only serve to add new worries to his mind. He had briefly considered already what Thranduil’s reaction to his son’s death might be, but his own grief had put this out of mind until his being reminded by the twins just now.

One right after the other, the twins removed their hands. They then added yet another burden to Aragorn’s already overwhelmed shoulders, with Elladan looking forward to Kalin, who was speaking to Jakob at the moment about something to do with his bow, a topic a Silvan Elf could speak of for hours on end. The elder Noldor said softly, “We fear for Kalin. We know he promised Legolas to look after you with his Prince’s death, but – ”

“ – we doubt he will live beyond telling Thranduil. And Thranduil will have just as many criticisms and accusations for Kalin as he does for you,” the younger twin ended.

The twins fell silent. After a while, they allowed their horses to fall behind so they rode side by side and Estel once more rode alone, though he spurred his mount a little closer to Kalin and Legolas. As they continued their journey, Estel did nothing but worry. They would not stop again until they reached the lake, and during this long ride, Aragorn continued to feel Legolas’ presence, which only served to heighten his apprehension. Knowing Legolas’ rhaw may die at any moment, the man could not wait to be off his horse and with the Wood-Elf’s body in his arms, where he would take care to hold his lover at least one last time.


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is relatively short because what comes after this chapter is another small time jump, and with only Estel's POV available, there is no feasible way to break it up except make a new chapter. So, anyway, at least I posted quickly, eh? Two chapters in four days! =P
> 
> Enjoy! As always, thanks for reading.

As Aragorn predicted, they arrived at the lake a few hours before nightfall. The humans and Elves were eager to set up camp, meager though their possessions proved to be in doing so. Elladan offered his bedroll to Wendt to use, since the blacksmith had not a thing upon him other than his mace and the shovel he had brought to bury his kin, long before the villagers arrived to burn them. The ring of stones and charred earth where Legolas and Estel had placed their fire pit while staying in this very clearing by the lake was soon surrounded by bedrolls and blankets. Groans of discomfort were given from all after having ridden all day without stop save for a brief break to relieve themselves. Not too close to the fire pit but under the tree where Aragorn had claimed weeks ago the seat made by the indentation of gnarled roots, the twins laid out the Silvan Prince upon Legolas’ bedroll, with every one of the Ranger and Prince’s extra blankets placed upon him to keep the dying Wood-Elf’s body as warm and comfortable as possible.

As for his own bedroll, Estel laid it beside Legolas’ body. The day had been relatively warm, given the time of year, and though the night would prove to be colder, it was still not so algid the Ranger needed to lie by the fire for comfort. Besides, he wanted above all else to be beside his lover, to share his warmth with the laegel, and to feel the Elf in his arms for at least this one last night. And if Legolas died tonight, then Aragorn would be there when it happened, which was the most for which he could hope now.

In silence out of respect for the grief the Eldar and Aragorn were feeling for their friend’s death, the other Edain parceled out more of the smoked venison Estel and Legolas had made at this very lake, along with some sharp, crumbly, and aged cheese Jakob had appropriated from the stores in the village’s schoolhouse. Aragorn took his share, sat it upon his knee, and stared at the activity around him. It wasn’t until he noticed how Elladan and Elrohir constantly looked his way that the man took to eating; he didn’t want to worry his brothers. The two Noldor had enough about which to worry. Reluctant to fill his moiling belly, Aragorn nonetheless ate the fare provided to him, chewing each bite more than needed, just to make certain it would not upset his stomach. When he washed down the last bite with a swallow of water from the skin at his waist, Estel brushed the crumbs from off his tunic and thighs and then gazed up at the sky.

 _You did not disappear at dawn, meleth nin,_ he thought as if speaking to Legolas. _And I feel you still. Are you nearby? Are you stuck here until your rhaw passes?_

Wendt, Jakob, and Halbarad were building a fire, speaking softly amongst themselves about what had happened at the farm, with Tomas listening attentively, though saying nothing, as was his way. The twins were searching through their possessions for the bladder of miruvor. They would try to give more of it to Legolas, if it didn’t choke the Wood-Elf, to keep his rhaw comfortable as it died. No one knew for certain if the Prince’s body suffered, or if Legolas could feel this suffering, and so no one wanted for the Wood-Elf to endure any pain, hunger, or thirst. They could not feed him, but the miruvor would stave off the worst of any hunger pangs, while providing his body some sustenance and aiding his broken ribs in mending, which would ease any pain his rhaw might be experiencing.

Meanwhile, standing too far away for Aragorn to hear what the two were saying, Reana spoke in Kalin’s ear, and then he in her ear, before the Elleth took the sentry by the hand, whispered into his ear again, and then with their satchels over her shoulder, she led him away from the rest of them. They ambled along the shore, hand in hand, walked around the lake’s irregularly circular edge, until they were beyond the Adan’s sight – but not before Estel saw Kalin look back a final time to where his Prince laid. It hurt Aragorn to see this. He did not begrudge any comfort the two might find in each other’s presence, no, but he wished with all his being for he and Legolas to be able to do the same for the other.

After a while, with nothing but the Edain’s whispered conversation and the twins’ rummaging, along with the natural sounds of the woods in the evening, Elladan and Elrohir came to where Estel sat beside Legolas, a bowl of watered down miruvor in the younger Noldo’s hand. Without speaking, Elladan lifted the Wood-Elf’s fair head, his stout and devoted forearm under Legolas’ neck, and with a small spoon normally used by the twins to measure herbs, Elrohir began trickling very small amounts of the liquid into the Prince’s mouth. They could not hurt the dying Prince in doing this, but again, because no one wanted for the Elf’s body to suffer any more than they could prevent, Aragorn crawled a bit downwards until he could easily lay his head against Legolas’ chest. Once in place, he listened for the telltale sounds of the miruvor entering the Prince’s lungs rather than his belly; hearing no signs of Legolas breathing in the liquid rather than it sliding down his gullet, Aragorn remained as he was, his cheek pressed to his lover’s chest, until Elladan replaced the Silvan’s head upon the rolled up cloak serving as Legolas’ pillow. He sat up and gauged the color of the Prince’s face – it was less ashen, more rubicund with natural vigor, and his breathing was still even and low, albeit a bit too shallow.

Ere he thought better of his words, he asked his Elven brothers, “Would it not be best to quit giving him nourishment? We only prolong his rhaw’s living, do we not?”

Their identical visages giving the Adan equally identically strange glowers, neither twin answered. Elladan adjusted the blankets over the Wood-Elf while Elrohir mopped at a rivulet of pale red liquid having run down the Prince’s chin. When done, they sat back and kept Aragorn quiet company for a while, until Elladan sighed loudly while staring at his filthy hands.

“I, for one, would like to bathe,” the younger Noldo stated upon seeing the cruor staining his own hands and clothing, while his elder nodded his concurrence and added, “And change clothing. I do not like having the villagers’ blood upon me.”

Estel looked down to where Legolas laid, appearing peaceful as if in sleep rather than in the last stages of death. They were still willing to try to feed the Silvan, so he thought they might also be willing to offer Legolas a different kind of comfort, one upon which Aragorn knew his Wood-Elf was most keen whilst alive. Indeed, the Adan thought back to when he and the Elf had been accosted in the forest of Mirkwood by the merchants Sven and Cort. After suffering the Edain’s vile attentions, Legolas had been coated in the evidence of said excruciation; knowing Legolas as he did, Aragorn had immediately sought to clean off the seed, blood, and filth upon his friend’s body, for he had known the Prince would feel better for it, even though he had been as lifeless then as was he now.

Thus, he asked of his brothers, “Will you help me to bathe Greenleaf? I know he is gone,” he said, forefending any argument they might make on the uselessness of bathing the laegel when his rhaw was soon to follow his faer in dying, “but I cannot help but think Legolas would appreciate it if we bathed and dressed him in clean clothing. If nothing else, he will be ready for his burial,” he ended, his chest seizing painfully with the imagining of placing the Wood-Elf in the ground, throwing dirt over him, and never again seeing his lover’s benevolent, beautiful face. 

Because their human brother needed this, and because Aragorn was right in saying Legolas would appreciate the kindness, Elladan and Elrohir nodded their assent as one. “Go find him and yourself something clean to wear,” Elladan told the Ranger, “I will sit by him for now.”

Aragorn climbed to his feet and walked to where he had thrown his and Legolas’ bags with the others’ belongings. He dropped to his knees and drew his satchel to him, quickly pulling from it the only other pair of trousers, undershirt, and tunic he had brought, all of which were clean, as both he and Legolas had washed their extra clothing the day before leaving the lake. He next did the same in finding the Prince’s extra set of clothing, but with his lover’s shirt in hand, he found his fingers twisting in the light blue fabric, and before he knew what he was doing, Aragorn had the shirt up to his nose. Even though it had been washed in the lake and hung in the sun to dry, the cloth still held the fragrance of bergamot and pines, of which Legolas always seemed to smell. Forcing himself to stop, for if he did not he would soon begin to weep, Estel dug through the laegel’s bag in search of his brush, and after finding it, he lastly grabbed a clean linen towel upon which he could dry the Silvan when finished. All this in hand, he walked back to where Elladan sat beside Legolas.

Elrohir had been doing the same in finding him and his twin something clean to wear, but he now walked over to where the Edain were gathered around the fire, speaking now of inane topics. The younger Noldo explained to the men, “Reana and Kalin have gone off to be alone for a while, and my brothers and I plan to bathe in the lake. We are taking Legolas with us. If you four will please keep watch, just in case the villagers come looking for us, then we will do the same for you should you wish to bathe after us.”

“I haven’t had a proper bath in a week,” the eldest human rued with a vacant smile – a smile that fell from his face when he looked to his Chieftain, for Halbarad immediately felt awful for finding any humor in their situation when Aragorn was grieving the loss of his lover. Halbarad ran a hand over his silver hair, the crown of which was tinted red from the blood he had smeared upon it that early morning, and offered, “We will keep watch. Take whatever time you need.”

With Elrohir carrying his and Elladan’s belongings and Estel carrying his and Legolas’ things, Elladan hefted the Prince into his arms and took the lead in finding a suitable spot in which to bathe. They walked the same way Kalin and Reana had gone, though not so far as to catch up to the two lovers, but far enough for some privacy. Neither the twins nor Aragorn would have had any shame in bathing before the other Rangers and Wendt, but without convening over the matter, none of them found it appropriate to bare the Prince’s body to the humans’ eyes – not after all the Elf had suffered from men. Hurriedly, Estel shed his boots and then the rest of his clothing, throwing them all into a heap upon the shore, ere he strode into the lake. The water was chilly but refreshingly so; still, it made the man worry, _I hope this will not be too cold for Greenleaf. I hope I am not hastening his end by lowering his body’s temperature in doing this._

Once far enough into the water, he waited. Elrohir had likewise shed his own clothing, and now took Legolas from his twin’s arms. He waded into the water, following after Estel, and once they were both waist deep, the younger twin gently released the Wood-Elf’s body, which floated upon the surface with ease, though Estel kept his hand upon the back of his lover’s neck to ensure Legolas’ head always remained above the surface. With three washcloths and a bottle of soap oil, Elladan joined his brothers. They took turns holding the Prince’s head above the lake’s surface while the other two washed quickly and thoroughly. Once each of them were scrubbed from head to toe, they used their cloths upon the Wood-Elf, with Estel starting at his lover’s pale, long, and thick hair, and the twins starting at the Prince’s feet, each of them taking a leg and moving upwards. Estel felt Legolas would not mind in the least for the three brothers to wash him in this way – the twins were the siblings Legolas had never had, and of course, Estel had touched and tasted every bit of flesh upon the Prince’s body. Gingerly, carefully, and lovingly, Aragorn wiped Legolas’ face clean. He ended up letting his brothers do most of the work, and instead, Estel merely continued to ensure nothing happened to cause the laegel’s head to go under. Once done, the twins swam for a bit to rinse off, while Estel ran his hands over his lover’s soft, alabaster skin. He took his time in doing so, enjoying the sight of the Prince’s well-defined musculature and unblemished flesh.

 _This may be the last time I ever see Legolas in all his glory,_ the Ranger realized.

He closed his eyes for a moment, squeezing them painfully shut to keep himself from losing his composure, and instead, with this realization in the front of his mind, Estel began trying to memorize every detail he could of the Wood-Elf’s body, beginning with the way his pointed ears gracefully stuck out from his long hair, which floated in a tangle upon the lake’s surface. He gently ran his fingertips over the striking features of Legolas’ face, along his slender, elegant neck, and over his unmarred shoulders. The Ranger took care to relish with his fingers the feel of Legolas’ lithe, lean body –the Prince’s deceptively small form hid great strength, he knew. He let his own digits trail between each of the Elf’s long, well-designed fingers, between each of his toes, and while the twins were busy scrubbing the last of the soap out of their hair, Aragorn allowed himself the privilege of using his bare hands – rather than the cloth – to rub clean his lover’s flaccid, shapely cock and between his pert, pleasing arse. He might have felt lecherous to do all this fondling while Legolas’ faer was gone, but Aragorn knew the Elf would never believe Estel to be lewd for doing so. Legolas would have known Aragorn did this out of adoration, not out of lust. Besides, Aragorn was quite certain he would never love another as he did Legolas, and he would likely never take another lover, so he wanted to memorize the very feel and texture of his Greenleaf’s body so he would never forget. And were he alive to know what Estel did, Legolas would have understood indeed, for he had done much the same while the man slept in the schoolhouse, with Aragorn’s shaft inside the Elf’s body – that is, he had taken his time in memorizing every facet of the human.

With the twins done washing, Elladan wordlessly carried Legolas from the water with Elrohir hurrying to spread out his own bedroll upon the grass, upon which Elladan laid the Prince. Aragorn climbed onto the bank and took up the clean towel he had brought; he first dried himself off quickly before pulling on a clean pair of trousers. He then cautiously and thoroughly dried the Woodland Prince. Nearby, his brothers did much the same in drying themselves and putting on clean clothes, and once done, they came to Estel to help him dress the laegel in the clothing Aragorn had brought from the Silvan’s pack, though they rebound Legolas’ ribs beforehand. Aragorn finished dressing to stave off the chill and looked at the work they had done. Overall, despite that the Elf had not truly been dirty before his bath, Legolas looked much better now he was clean. Moreover, and more importantly, the three brothers knew their Silvan friend would appreciate their sentiment in seeing his body clean and cared for, just as the Elf would have done were he alive to see it completed himself. Estel had just begun to brush through his lover’s butter colored hair when Kalin and Reana walked their way, again hand in hand, and both appearing flushed and sated, while also having apparently taken a bath, as well, from the evidence of their dripping hair and change of clothes.

More relaxed now he had been able to tend to Legolas, to touch and hold the Elf after a day of being relegated to watching others do it, Estel found himself pleased to see how Kalin and Reana were enjoying each other’s company. Such comfort was much needed in dreadful times such as these. _Maybe, with Reana’s aid and attention, Kalin will have something for which to live, rather than give in to despair with his Prince’s death,_ the man hoped of the Silvan sentry. Despite Kalin’s sanguineous appearance, it was apparent Kalin must’ve been weeping at some point, for his eyes were rimmed redly.

Upon their approach and seeing how the Noldor and Ranger had been caring for his Prince without him, Kalin released the Elleth’s hand and sprinted towards Legolas, wishing to join the brothers in tending Legolas. Aragorn saw Reana’s sad, understanding smile – given to Kalin’s back, as his concentration was now only for Legolas – and the Adan was glad the she-Elf was not jealous of Kalin’s love for his Prince. Kalin hovered behind the twins, who were merely sitting upon their heels and brushing out their own sopping wet hair, while looking at Estel’s attempts to brush the laegel’s tresses into order.

“I will go see the Rangers have what they need,” Reana told Kalin when she caught back up with him. The Noldorin Elleth paused only long enough to grasp the Silvan sentry by the back of the neck; by this hold, she pulled Kalin’s head down so she could place a gentle kiss upon his forehead. Kalin stopped her with a gentle grab to her chin; he met her mouth with his own, kissing her properly upon the lips, before he nodded at her and let her go.

“Come,” Elrohir told his twin, standing and offering Elladan a hand up. “Let us go ascertain the horses are watered and fed.”

With that, the twins now left the Ranger and sentry alone with Legolas. It took Kalin only a moment more of watching the Adan’s efforts for him to grow exasperated. Although the man had often brushed and plaited Legolas’ hair, he was willing to allow Kalin to do it, for he could see the Wood-Elf was eager to be of some use to his Prince, to touch him, to assure himself of the younger Silvan’s living presence –though it was only corporeal. “Let me,” Kalin offered and held his hand out for the brush.

Gladly, the man allowed Kalin to see to this undertaking. While the sentry did this for his Prince, Aragorn replaced his lover’s boots, though not because the Elf was soon to need them for walking, but merely to help keep the Silvan’s feet from growing cold. Already, the effects of the miruvor were wearing off in that the healthy flush was once again absent from Legolas’ face, the warmth the cordial had brought was spent, and though he did not shiver, the Prince’s skin was as cold as the lake water. By the time Kalin was finished, Legolas appeared as kempt as he would normally be. In fact, if the Elf would only open his eyes and stand, he could have been prepared to walk into an important dinner held by his father for some visiting dignitary, so fine did he look to Aragorn.

“We ought to get him back, near to the fire,” the Woodland sentry suggested, to which Aragorn nodded.

Aragorn stood to carry his lover himself, only to find Kalin preempting this attempt. Had he not just spent the last half hour bathing Legolas, he might have been upset at the Wood-Elf’s continuous intervention in Aragorn’s caretaking of the laegel; as it was, Estel bit back the invidious invective so determined to flee his lips. _You are not the only one losing him,_ the Adan reminded himself. He helped Kalin to situate the younger Silvan in his arms, picked up the dirty clothing and other remnants of their task, and then led the way.

With Legolas in his arms, Kalin followed Aragorn back to the others, who were at the campfire. He aided Kalin in placing Legolas onto his makeshift bed, ensured the blankets were spread over him, and then tucked them in tightly. Soon, he would lie beside the Prince, hold him in his arms, and sleep. Meanwhile, however, a gaze towards the fire showed him someone had packed a small keg of ale amongst the provisions, and this was tapped and poured into battered tin mugs. _Jakob brought this, no doubt,_ he guessed. _Jakob does love his ale._ Gratefully, Aragorn took a cup and drained it in one gulp. He made to sit it back on the stump next to the keg, only to have Tomas take the mug from him, refill it, and then hand it back to Aragorn with a mute smile.

“Well, come on then. Let us bathe before the sun sets,” Jakob told his fellow humans as he stood and grabbed his own belongings.

The three Rangers and Wendt took off around the bend to where the Noldor and Estel had washed Legolas, where they would be out of sight of anyone approaching from the village side, and thus not be picked off as easy targets should the mob have rallied and come looking for vengeance. Aragorn drained his second mug of ale ere he sat the tin cup upon the keg and walked to where his own bedroll was laid out beside the Prince’s bed.

Customarily, his brothers would be teasing him or arguing with each other for amusement, but obviously, this was not the time for it. Aragorn had not forgotten the hurtful things the twins had said to him the day before. While they no longer seemed angry with him – his almost dying seemed to have tempered said anger – a gulf laid between the three brothers, one Aragorn feared may never be breached. He loved the twins and their argument over his culpability in Legolas’ condition would not change this; yet, he had not forgiven them for their judgment. None of this stopped the Noldorin brothers from mothering the man, however, and Elladan came to him – tub of unguent in hand – while Elrohir brought over every blanket the twins had between them to give to the human for the night. Feigning more patience than he felt, Aragorn allowed Elladan to smear the cut upon his face with the ointment again and did not balk when Elrohir unfurled the blankets such that they would cover both Legolas and Estel, once he laid down to sleep.

By the time the twins were done fussing over him, and then fussing over Legolas again by adjusting the bindings on his ribs and giving him more of the watered down miruvor, the Rangers and blacksmith were finished with their own baths and returned to camp. No one had clothing suitable for Wendt, as the man was taller and more muscled than were any of the other humans or Elves in their group, but the blacksmith was clean, at least, and looked more like he had the morning they had met him in the schoolhouse – composed and sharp of mind. The lackluster, dim, and vacant expression he had worn since their fight with the smith’s fellow villagers was now absent, which Aragorn was glad to see.

With everyone fed, bathed, and all their minor wounds tended, the men and Eldar were ready to settle down for the night. The twins stood and joined the others at the fire, where everyone was helping him or herself to another cup of ale to ease the tensions of the night previous and a hard day’s ride.

“Elladan, Reana, and I will take the watches tonight,” Elrohir offered, telling the men, “while the rest of you sleep. You could all use it, I am sure, and we will be here for a few more days,” he continued, referring to himself, his brothers, the Silvan, and Reana, though not of the Rangers and Wendt, as there had been no talk of what the plans were for the Edain.

There was no dissent to his idea. The Rangers knew the Eldar could well stay awake and keep watch better than could they, especially since the three Noldor were consummate warriors, with whom all the Rangers were acquainted; also, Wendt did not argue despite not knowing the twins or Reana very well, for he went along with his fellow Edain.

“Speaking of which,” Halbarad brought up at the mention of the differing plans for the two sets of people, while shifting upon his bedroll in agitation as he ventured congenially, “I was wondering if you wanted for us to travel with you to Imladris. We would be glad to do so, to help you get the Prince’s body back to the valley, should you desire, or merely to help explain to Lord Elrond what happened.”

“There is no need, but thank you,” Aragorn declined for his brothers and Kalin, needing to raise his voice to be heard, since he sat a bit away from the others. He smiled genuinely at his fellow Rangers and was glad to have them as allies. They could have easily condemned him and turned against him once they found out he had formed a bond with a male Elf, but none of them had; in fact, they had all seemed happy to see Estel happy, and were now sorrowed on his behalf. Lowering his voice, for he found it hard to say it aloud, much less loudly, Estel clarified, “We intend to wait here until Greenleaf dies. Kalin and I wish to bury him here, where we can mark his grave easily, should the Elvenking wish to visit it to pay his respects. There is no need for all of you to stay for it. Once he is buried, we will return to Imladris.”

Elladan further assured the Rangers, “And I believe we know enough of what happened prior to our arrival for our father to comprehend what occurred, and perhaps enough so he may have some idea of how to ensure the village is truly safe from Elise.”

“I don’t imagine it will be much longer.” Kalin was rolling the last swallow of his ale around and around in the bottom of his cup. He looked into the beaten tin container with a morose frown, as if the ale within offended him somehow, ere he tossed the dregs into the fire, causing the flames to sputter and flash. Sitting the cup on the ground beside him, Kalin sighed, “My Prince’s rhaw will surely succumb in the next couple of days.”

Kalin’s declaration ended the conversation; no one could find anything suitable to reply, as anything they might try to say to appease the Silvan, Noldor, and Aragorn’s grief would seem trite and pitying. Only Halbarad spoke after this, telling his Chieftain, “If you have no further need for us, then, Aragorn, we will be on our way come morning.”

The Rangers’ Chieftain nodded his agreement to this plan ere he turned the whole of his attention back to the Silvan at his side. Thus, it was decided for the Rangers – save for Estel – to go their separate ways while the Noldor, Silvan, and Estel would remain at the lake in wait for Legolas’ death. With everything taken care of and everyone’s course set before them, the humans quietly turned in for the night, as they had a long journey to begin on the morrow, while Reana, Elladan, and Elrohir spread out around the area to keep watch. Although Kalin had not been included in protecting their camp, he would not sleep, Estel was sure. When the Adan laid down beside Legolas, it was only a moment later when Kalin sat down on the opposite side of where Aragorn laid, on the other side of the Prince’s deathly still body. Kalin might not be keeping watch over the camp, but Kalin would keep watch over his Prince this night.

 _It is strange to be back at the lake where Legolas and I enjoyed ourselves and each other so greatly; after a few days’ time, both Legolas and I were doomed to die, and now, Legolas is dead._ He was tired of weeping, but could not help the bitter, stinging tears welling in his eyes. He scooted closer to Legolas’ inert body, wishing he could pull the Silvan into his arms, but did not desire to cause the injured Prince any pain. However, he aligned his front with the Elf’s side, and with Kalin’s unasked for but appreciated assistance, he spread the blankets out over top of the two of them, such that he was sharing his body’s warmth with the cold laegel. _This may be the last time I sleep beside him, should he die tonight or on the morrow,_ the man recognized. In fact, each singular event this day and night might prove to be the last time he shared many things with Legolas, the least of which was his bedroll.

Although not an Elf and having no idea how Legolas had done it for him the night before last – while they were sharing the small cot in the schoolhouse after finding pleasure together, after Legolas had been touched by Elise and fated to die with Aragorn – Estel focused his entire being upon the Elf’s empty body, willing his lover’s faer to return to it, and trying to infuse his Greenleaf’s rhaw with the vitality of his own soul. He knew in his heart his actions were of no use. He knew Legolas could not return to his rhaw.

But then, Aragorn could not fathom the possibility of his lover’s demise, despite everything and everyone indicating the end of the Prince. And he wouldn’t believe it possible – at least, not until Legolas’ heart quit beating.

Believing he would not fall asleep this night, Aragorn’s tired body and exhausted mind succumbed to slumber in unwilling necessity, while beneath his hand, Legolas’ heart beat on.


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be the resolution of Legolas' current state of limbo, I promise. I've actually managed to edit through these last three chapters just because of how eager I am to get this all resolved. 
> 
> Enjoy, dears, and as always, thanks for the comments you leave, those of you who do. It is wonderful to know someone, anyone, is reading. Without you, I wouldn't bother posting!

With the dawning of the sun, the humans were all awake and moving about, for they were all accustomed to rising early. The Eldar had not slept the prior night, having taken watch, so were already preparing food to break the group’s fast. Aragorn had slept hard and deeply, unlike his brethren; in fact, so profoundly had he slept that upon his waking, the normally easy to rise Ranger needed a few moments before he realized where he was and why Kalin was sitting on the other side of Legolas. And then, when the realization hit the Adan of why the sentry was watching over his Prince in the night, all muddling thoughts sharpened into focus – a focus set entirely upon the Wood-Elf by whom he laid. Thus, Estel woke to the sounds of the others rustling about their campsite, the smells of the deliciously fragrant stew Reana and Elrohir were making of some fish they had caught in the early morning and some greens Elladan had found while scouting their surroundings for signs of danger, and the feeling of Legolas’ cold, lifeless body beside his own.

He sat in a hurry. Normally, he did not sleep as long as he had this morning, but given he had slept not at all the night before last and given the physical and spiritual draining he had endured over the last few days, Aragorn had desperately needed the rest, which was why no one woke him up but let him slumber until he woke naturally. His first coherent words this morning were to Kalin when he asked the Elf succinctly, “How fares Greenleaf?”

“The same,” the sentry replied. It didn’t appear to Aragorn as if the Silvan guard had moved at all during the night, for he sat in the same position beside his charge, with his head even cocked in the same manner as when last Aragorn had seen him. “Unless,” the Wood-Elf amended, wrenching his gaze away from Legolas and to Estel, while anxiety marred his features as he brought up the possibility, “Can you still feel my Prince?”

Rubbing at his dry, aching eyes, Aragorn wanted desperately to tell Kalin good news rather than the same as he had so many times before since they left the farm. He did not begrudge the sentry this constant need for assurance of his charge’s proximity, however, and so answered readily enough, “I still feel him, but he remains distant.”

Kalin took his Prince’s arm in hand and wrapped his fingers around the younger Wood-Elf’s wrist. With his other hand, he inspected Legolas’ nails, perhaps deeming whether to cut them or to clean the dirt out from beneath them, or perhaps doing this merely to have some excuse to touch his charge. He began, “It is strange. For so many years, I have been acutely aware of Legolas’ presence. I have guarded not just his body, but his heart and soul the best I have been able since becoming his sentry – from Thranduil, from fell beasts, or even from insults or suspicions by our own kin. And I cannot even guess to tell you how many people I have turned away from being in his company, deeming them unworthy of my Prince’s attention, or because I feared they might try to use his good nature to their advantage. Day and night, tirelessly I have devoted the whole of my life to Legolas, until his existence was the reason for my own,” the Wood-Elf spoke, his locution seemingly purposeless to Estel, unless the sentry was merely trying to ease himself by speaking of his charge. “So attuned had I become to my Prince’s faer, so aware of his every thought and emotion, that to have all of it now absent feels as if I have lost half of my own faer. Or, at least, it ought to feel thusly.”

His speculation of the day before – when he had wondered how many potential friends and suitors Kalin had driven away from his Prince – was now confirmed, and he thought himself lucky once more over how Kalin had not tried to drive a wedge between himself and Greenleaf, for the Prince had held his sentry’s opinion in high regard. Aragorn scooted closer to Legolas’ hip so he could peer down into his lover’s face, ere he turned his attention back to the sentry. “What do you mean?” the Adan asked. “When you say it ought to feel thusly but does not. What do you mean?”

In the ochre, pale light of the midmorning, Kalin smiled gently at the Ranger. A leaf was caught in the guard’s hair, but he did not notice, so intent was he upon the Prince lying before him, whose wrist he held to tightly. “I’m not sure. But before his faer abandoned his rhaw, I could sense Legolas’ spirit. And at the farm, when I told you his faer was gone but you said you felt Legolas, even though Elladan, Elrohir, Reana, and I were sure his body was emptied of its soul, I desired for it to be true. I desired so greatly for Legolas’ faer to be present I fear I have fantasized his existence. And I fear I am imagining it now.”

All through their ride from the farm to here, Kalin had repeatedly asked Aragorn if he felt Legolas’ proximity, but not once had Kalin claimed to feel Legolas, as well. To hear it now, but to have Kalin say he believed he was merely conjuring up the awareness of his Prince to soothe his guilty, bereaved conscience, aligned with Aragorn’s doubts on the matter. Rather than affirm Estel’s misgivings over whether he truly felt his lover’s spirit, Kalin’s words did the opposite, however, for the man was not willing to let go of Legolas without a fight to the very end, and so decided, _Kalin feels him, as well. I cannot be imagining Greenleaf’s presence. He is here still, I know it, if even Kalin feels Legolas is still near._

He did not argue aloud with the sentry over it, though, for Kalin looked at peace with his acceptance of his Prince’s death, and Aragorn did not want to open this wound again, lest it fester with some negligible hope over whether Legolas might speak or appear before them ere his body died. It would only hurt Kalin in the end if he did so. And if the Wood-Elf _did_ appear or speak to them before his body died – and thus before his faer moved on, as they could only hopefully assume – then it might be solely Aragorn to whom he appeared or spoke, and consequently, it would be useless for Kalin to know of, unless the Prince had any final words for his sentry. _Kalin is taking Legolas’ death much easier than I would have guessed,_ he considered of the Silvan, but being they had yet to deal with the Prince’s corpse, the tempest of grief may yet be on the horizon.

“Aragorn, Kalin!” the blacksmith called out to the sentry and Ranger, who had been so engrossed in their conversation they had not yet gotten up to eat with the others. “Come before it grows cold. It is worth it, I promise.”

He didn’t want to leave Legolas for a single moment, but he could not sit beside the Prince for every second of every day until his body died; there was no telling how long the process would take. So, Aragorn rose with friendly help from Kalin, and together they joined the others at the fire, leaving the Prince on his own for a while. The pot of fish stew smelled delicious, and unlike the night previous, Aragorn found his belly rumbling not with sickness but with hunger. With no bowls in which to apportion the stew, Reana and Elrohir were pouring the fragrant, hearty soup into the tin cups they had used the night before for their ale, and the Eldar and Edain drank it with pleasure. They said little except for Halbarad reminding his fellow Rangers to be ready to depart once they were finished. It would be wasteful not to take advantage of the daylight, especially since the hours of good light were fewer this time of year.

When finished with his own breakfast, Kalin went back to his Prince, Elladan and Elrohir took the dishes to the lake to wash, and Reana helped the Rangers with their horses to prepare for their departure. Aragorn was forlorn to see Halbarad, Jakob, and Tomas go. They were good men, all three, and stalwart, trustworthy, and loyal, and he would have liked to keep them there at the lake – at least until Legolas’ body died – for the extra protection. But on the other hand, he didn’t need any more witnesses to what would likely be his inconsolable woe when the Wood-Elf’s rhaw finally expired along with his faer, for nothing would make the Prince’s death more final than burying his body, and Aragorn was not sure how well he would take it. He stood by and watched as his underlings prepared to depart.

Halbarad, Tomas, and Jakob all prepared to say their goodbyes. It would be a simple and practical affair, for Estel would see his Rangers soon enough once his task of burying Legolas and taking his brothers home to the valley was accomplished. In fact, as he walked Halbarad to his horse, he told the elder man, “Once I’ve reached Imladris with my brothers, I intend to leave straightaway for Bree. If you have any need of me, leave word there, if you are not there yourself.”

The elder Ranger was ostensibly surprised by this, perhaps having thought his Chieftain might wish to stay in the hidden vale for a while to mourn the loss of the Silvan Prince, or to do as he had offered Kalin by going with the sentry to take word to Thranduil of Thranduilion’s death, but Halbarad did not contend his Chieftain’s decision. Instead, he promised, “Assuming nothing else goes to shit on our way there, we will be in Bree by the time you get to Rivendell and then head out to Bree. Unless something amiss needs our attention right away, we will wait for you there, and leave word if we must go before your arrival,” he confirmed to Aragorn.

Fervently, Estel clapped Halbarad on the back in camaraderie before the older Adan mounted his horse. Aragorn could not fathom staying in Rivendell and enduring the mourning which would occur after the Imladrians learnt of the death of the Prince of Mirkwood. Legolas had spent so much time in the valley, the Imladrians considered him part of the household, as well as part of Elrond’s family. There would be much singing, weeping, and honors for the Prince upon their return to Rivendell – to which Estel did not wish to stick around to bear witness. Were Aragorn a better man, or so he derided himself, he would travel with Kalin to the Greenwood to take the news to Thranduil about Thranduilion’s death, but since he was certain the Elvenking would blame him for it, Estel instead decided it best to throw himself back into danger, into his calling, by returning to work as a Watcher. Perhaps he could die out in the wilds somewhere doing good, rather than sitting around in Imladris mourning and wishing he were dead.

“I’m sorry about Legolas,” the elder Adan told the younger, looking down at him from atop his steed. Halbarad was unaccustomed to shows of affection; he was a pragmatic, methodical, and typically unemotional man. Estel could see how hard it was for Halbarad even to voice this sympathy for his Chieftain, which made it all the more poignant for Aragorn to hear when Halbarad told Estel, “Legolas was noble, selfless, and brave. The world is less for the loss of him.”

Before Aragorn could respond to this kind praise, Jakob brought his horse up to stand beside Halbarad’s mount and piped up, adding, “As am I sorry. Legolas was a good one, indeed. Except for the time he nearly slit my throat, that is,” the imperturbably good-humored Ranger joshed mildly, earning him a lackadaisical poke to the ribs from Halbarad for his distasteful jest.

A genuine laugh escaped Estel’s mouth ere he could stop it. It felt wrong to laugh when Legolas was dying. “You got lucky that night,” he responded to the fiery-haired man, who was now smiling nervously and pulling at the braids of his beard in anticipation of learning he had upset his Chieftain with his joke. But Aragorn’s laughing response to his humor eased Jakob’s anxiety and his jocular smile returned, lighting up his freckled face with his customary humor. Aragorn told Jakob, clapping the red-haired Adan on the knee, “Had I not woken in time, nothing would have stopped Legolas from doing it, I think. Very lucky, indeed, my friend.”

Jakob chuckled vigorously, despite the morbidity of their topic. Tomas rode up behind the other two Rangers and merely nodded at Aragorn with evident but unspoken sympathy in his eyes; Aragorn nodded back at him and voiced a goodbye and well wishes for a safe journey. This was the only sendoff he would receive from Tomas.

It didn’t much surprise Aragorn to find Wendt had prepared his own belongings and horse and had mounted up, ready to ride with the Rangers to leave as they did. The twins were finally done with the dishes and had come back to say their own goodbyes to the Rangers, doing so while Estel walked to Wendt’s horse to say farewell.

“You’ve decided to try your luck in Bree? Or is there someplace along the way you plan to stop?” he asked of the blacksmith congenially, while standing beside Wendt’s massive leg and foot, the latter of which nearly didn’t fit in the stirrup.

“I think I will go to Bree, send word to my Mum and Da, and stay away from the village for a while. I may return eventually,” he considered, although to Estel the man sounded too hurt to want to face the people who had wanted him dead for being who he was, even if it had been a minority of his fellow villagers, and the dregs of them at that. He sighed and shifted in the saddle. The smith had chosen the largest of the horses they had acquired from the village, one which could carry his muscled weight without difficulty. “Maybe if I give them some time, they’ll grow to miss me,” he suddenly teased, his pleasantly handsome face becoming more so when he smiled widely at Estel.

“I hope that is true. Perhaps in time they will see the error of their prejudiced thinking.” Aragorn felt a twinge of guilt race across his belly. He abruptly realized he had been so focused upon losing Legolas that he had forgotten about all Wendt had lost – his sister, brother in law, and nephew, and also his niece, who was the cause of all the trouble to begin, not to mention their farm, which by all rights should have been his upon his family’s deaths, and now for the nonce, he had also lost his livelihood as a blacksmith. The Ranger told Wendt, “But I can’t imagine you ever feeling the same about the village as you did before… or at least, I wouldn’t, were I in your boots.”

Again, Wendt sighed and adjusted how he sat in the saddle, the very topic of which they spoke making him uncomfortable. “You’re probably right, but its home. We’ll see.”

With that, the matter was evidently decided, albeit unsatisfactorily for Aragorn, who wished he could have convinced the blacksmith to come with them to Imladris. But mollified the man had a plan for his immediate future, at least, Estel extended his hand out to take Wendt’s forearm, and the blacksmith returned the gesture at once. “Thank you for your aid, my friend,” he told Wendt. “I, my brothers, and Kalin are in your debt, as are the Rangers with whom you ride. If ever you change your mind and wish to come to Rivendell, whether to work or just to visit, find any Ranger and tell them I said to guide you there. They will see you to Rivendell. The offer stands, either way, should you wish to come live in my father’s house.”

Wendt smiled in pleasure to have this offer extended and he gratefully gave his thanks. “Thank you. And I’m sorry about Legolas,” the man offered before he turned his horse away to follow the others. “I truly am. I wish I’d had the chance to know him better, but what I knew of him, he seemed a fine Elf.”

The heartfelt sympathy nearly caused Aragorn’s eyes to fill with tears, but he refused to begin weeping, lest he not be able to stop. “That he was. A very fine Elf. Thank you,” he replied to the smith.

It was of some comfort to Estel to have had Wendt, Halbarad, and Jakob offer their condolences as though Legolas were Estel’s husband or bonded mate, rather than just a lover. Aragorn had felt like he and the Wood-Elf were together for the rest of their lives, anyway, even if the rest of their lives had been cut horribly short with Legolas’ life’s end. Those who remained stood together in a line to watch the Rangers and Wendt take off in a westerly direction – save for Reana, who was sitting beside Legolas to give Kalin a break from watching over his Prince. With some final waves and calls of farewell, the Rangers and Wendt rode out of the clearing by the lake and into the woods surrounding, on their way to Bree, though it would be a circuitous route they took.

And now, it was just Aragorn, Elladan, Elrohir, Kalin, and Reana – and Legolas, of course, although since the Elf was not present in spirit, just body, the Ranger did not think to count him amongst their remaining companions.

The twins were on Estel’s right and Kalin on his left. As he had manifold times since leaving the farm, Kalin asked Aragorn now, “Can you still feel him?”

And as Estel had answered numerous times, he replied, “Yes, but still only distantly.”

To his right, Aragorn saw the twins exchange between them one of their incomprehensible looks, which he ignored. The Adan was doing his best not to give Kalin false hope, nor keep any for himself, but he would not lie. He felt Legolas’ presence, yes, but as he had told Kalin just now, his Greenleaf was distant and vague, like a flickering, dimly burning star one can barely make out in a moonless sky.

“I tried to speak to my Prince last night,” Kalin admitted in a hoarse whisper. Like Estel, the Silvan sentry also tried not to begin mourning, lest he be unlikely to stop, and his puffy eyes and scratchy throat evinced how poorly he fared in this effort. “While you slept, Estel, I tried to speak to Legolas to listen while the woods were quiet with only the sounds of the night. But I heard nothing.”

Kalin’s admission and results from his experimentation in contacting the laegel didn’t shock Estel at all. Again, he saw Elladan and Elrohir exchange a glance between them. This one lasted longer, meaning they were having one of their wordless conversations, which Estel normally tolerated, though it now drove him to distraction. He had no idea what the two were thinking, but Aragorn was certain they were wishing their human brother and the Silvan sentry would give up on this obsession they had for feeling Legolas’ faer, for it would only prolong their agony over the Wood-Elf’s death.

Kalin cleared his throat and then spoke again, conceding uneasily as he took Aragorn’s elbow in hand, “Estel. I believe we are tricking ourselves into feeling Legolas’ presence. I do not think he is here. We are merely trying to appease our guilt and grief for our being unable to keep him from dying,” he told the man, explicating further upon what he had begun to tell Aragorn this morning before breakfast.

The twins looked between them yet another time; Aragorn saw the alleviation in their otherwise worried faces. What Kalin said was plausible. In fact, it was likely. He did not argue against it as he had not earlier, for if the sentry was in concord over Legolas’ death, it would be all the better for Kalin.

“I think he is gone. I _hope_ he is gone,” Kalin added, releasing Aragorn’s elbow and whirling away on heel, looking back to where Reana sat beside Legolas, listening to their conversation but staying out of it, and then Kalin began walking off towards the two as he finished, “I would not have his faer linger for eternity, but have him go to the Halls of Awaiting. Perhaps he is already there. His faer will be at peace in Námo’s care, I know it.”

“Maybe he is,” the man replied to Kalin, who was listening though he did not turn around to acknowledge the Adan, but continued on to his Prince. Aragorn wished aloud, “Maybe Greenleaf’s faer will finally manage to heal there.”

Aragorn now faced his brothers, who shared the same relief apparent in their ephemeral, empathetic smiles for him. Elrohir and Elladan had feared Kalin and Estel would continue this charade of believing Legolas might return to his body, since they claimed to feel his soul. And in doing so, the Ranger and sentry would only perpetuate their grief, the twins knew. He returned the twins’ smile and nodded to them, ere he took off to the tall, gnarled oak tree where a twisted dip in the exposed roots at the base of its trunk had created a cradle of sorts, which to Aragorn made a comfortable chair. He sat in this seat – the very one he had claimed as his while he and Legolas stayed here at the lake for those most pleasant weeks. He needed only to reach out to touch Legolas, should he desire, so close was the Elf lying near him. Kalin sat on the other side of his Prince with Reana behind him. The Elleth was rubbing Kalin’s back soothingly in the tender, silent way a lover might to offer comfort.

He thought of the memories he and Legolas had made here at this lake. He thought of the fishing, hunting, and cooking they had done, how they had ribbed each other over what they had caught for supper, or what they had not caught, given both of them had proved their ineptitude at fishing. He recalled the many times they had laughed, ventured bets upon skipping stones, the wagers of which had been articles of clothing. He remembered the many times he and Greenleaf had spoken of topics of importance or of inane silliness, arguing about the exact color of the sun as it set or speaking seriously of the laegel’s grief; likewise, the two had often sat in silence, nothing needing to be said between them, for the other’s company was sometimes all the other needed. He recalled the many times they had made love, and of how they had done it, with one eagerly pleasing the other with his mouth, or of Legolas riding the Ranger’s shaft with thrilling abandon, or Aragorn taking the Wood-Elf while Legolas laid on his back, his smiling, flushed face upon Estel’s until they found their climax. It was unreal for him to sit here now beside the Elf, with Legolas’ body dying and his soul surely gone.

“Will you stay with him a while? There is something I must do,” the sentry asked Reana quietly, thereby interrupting Aragorn’s thoughts.

“Of course,” she replied to the Wood-Elf, and scooted closer to Legolas, taking the sentry’s seat when Kalin stood and began away.

Estel’s mind meandered through his fond memories for a while longer, his gaze absently upon the Wood-Elf of whom he thought. The twins were tidying up the campsite, speaking between themselves, and Reana was humming softly under her breath while she smoothed the laegel’s tunic and blankets.

The Ranger sat in wait for Legolas to die; that is, until he noticed Kalin purposefully stride by with a shovel slung over his shoulder. It was the very shovel Wendt had been carrying to the farm when Legolas had stopped to halt the man on the road before he walked directly into Elise. Apparently, the blacksmith had left it with the Elves. His heart fearing to confirm what the sentry was preparing to do, although his mind reasoned it was a wise measure, Aragorn rose from the rooted ground and followed the Wood-Elf. Legolas would be well taken care of by Reana, and the twins were nearby, so the man did not fret for his lover’s body to be tended and protected. He trailed behind the Silvan guard, who walked the edge of the lake, while looking at the tree line along the shore. Kalin surely knew Aragorn followed him but did not speak to the Ranger until Estel broke the silence first.

“What are you doing?” he asked Kalin, though he knew the answer already.

“I am digging my Prince’s grave. I want to find the perfect spot for him. And it is better to do it now than wait until his rhaw dies. I think I may be too distressed to handle it then.” So matter of factly did Kalin say this that he could have been speaking of where to plant a row of beans. “As I said yesterday, I’d prefer to choose someplace easily found again, so Thranduil can come to pay his respects, should he desire, although I doubt he will bother. Also, I would like to bury him at the roots of a tree so his body can feed the forest, even if it is not our forest.”

Normally, one of the Silvan Elves from Thranduil’s realm would be buried in the Mirkwood forest. The Wood-Elves of Eryn Galen depended upon the forest entirely, obtaining their food through scavenging and hunting, gathering dead limbs for their fires, and building their homes and flets in or under the trees and using the lumber thereof. Thus, when a Silvan Elf of Thranduil’s realm died – which was more common than in other Elven realms because of the Dark threat in the forest and Thranduil’s lack of an Elven ring of power to protect his kith – the Wood-Elves would bury their dead loved one amidst the trees to give back to the very forest having sustained him or her through her of his life. They couldn’t take Legolas to his homeland, so following this tradition here would have to suffice. If Kalin were pleased by it, then Aragorn wouldn’t argue, no matter what or where the sentry chose. With a heavy heart, he set about facilitating Kalin in finding a suitable spot. Even though he had already accepted Legolas was dead, this task brought it further home for him. There was no saving grace, no hidden means of turning this around, and no miracle for which to pray. The part of Legolas making the Elf who he had been was dead; his body would soon follow. And once it did, they would bury the Elf’s corpse wherever they now chose.

“Here, I think,” Kalin finally said, standing next to a beech tree having seen only a few summers. It appeared sturdy and healthy, and thus would grow nicely. It would be awful to bury Legolas under a tree diseased or doomed to die. The sentry handled the barren limbs of the beech, running his fingers along it in the loving manner of which only one of the Silvan seemed capable, in Estel’s experience. “This one is young yet. Legolas can help it to grow.”

It would be his lover’s moldering corpse to nourish said tree into developing robust and healthy, but Aragorn tried not to focus upon this. He nodded his agreement to Kalin’s idea; the sentry broke the earth under the tree, far enough away to miss its main roots but close enough that with time, Legolas’ remains would be consumed by the sapling through the decay of the Wood-Elf’s flesh into the soil, from which the beech would obtain its nutrients. He let Kalin dig for a while before wordlessly asking for the shovel, his hand out. Kalin allowed this, although the tireless Silvan could have dug on until the task was completed, but the guard knew his Prince’s lover wished to take part in this burden of work. Aragorn dug until his back and arms began to tire, ere he gave the shovel to Kalin. They did this – trading spots and the shovel – until the grave was long enough to house Legolas’ corpse and deep enough that once covered in soil, no scavenging animal would be able to dig him out for a meal.

 _I will wrap him in a blanket,_ the Ranger told himself as he thought of throwing dirt upon his lover’s bare face. _I do not care if I freeze to death on our way back to the valley. He will not be stained with dirt._ The very thought of casting soil upon Legolas’ body, over his face, and into his hair, made Aragorn’s skin crawl in discomfort.

Standing beside the grave, leaning upon the shovel’s handle, Kalin stared down into the pit and voiced the very thing Aragorn had just been thinking, saying, “We will wrap him in a blanket, I think, to keep him from getting filthy. My Prince was most fond of being clean, wasn’t he?” he asked, and without waiting for an answer, continued, “I wish we were near the sea. We could have let his body float freely in the water, where he most loved to be. He could have swum for eternity,” the Silvan imagined with a faint smile upon his dirt-smudged visage.

It was a fine thought – one Aragorn wished could have happened, as well – but they had to make do with what they were allotted. “Come,” he told the sentry. “Let us go check on Greenleaf and appease the twins. They are likely wondering where we have been all this time.”

Silent as death, Kalin tacitly agreed to this by beginning away. As they walked the path along the shore, and thus ambled back to the others, Kalin unexpectedly told the man, “I am keeping my promise to Legolas. I will watch over you and protect you as I have done for my Prince these many years. But first, I need to take word to my King of his son’s death and tell the King I am no longer in his service. After that, I will be in yours.”

“You don’t need to do that,” he tried to dissuade the Elf. His steps petered to a halt ere he stopped Kalin by taking hold of the Elf’s forearm. “I am not Legolas – a Prince, I mean, worthy of your devotion. There is no need for you to keep that oath.”

“I do need to do it, and you are worthy because Legolas judged you worthy.” Kalin tugged his forearm free and walked on, reiterating, “Besides, I made an oath. You told Halbarad you would go to Bree after seeing us to Imladris, but I must first go to Thranduil before I join you. When I am done there, I will return and find you,” the sentry pledged, leaving Aragorn no leeway in which to argue. “If Thranduil doesn’t kill me for letting Legolas die, that is,” Kalin added, no humor in this warning, for both Ranger and Elf thought it possible the King might slay Kalin for his perceived failure to protect the Prince.

Truth be told, it would be extremely hard for Aragorn to have Kalin around, for the sentry reminded Aragorn of Legolas in both looks and demeanor, and with the Prince soon to be dead, Kalin’s constant company would only exacerbate the human’s grief. But he couldn’t ask Kalin to break a promise made to Legolas, and thus, the Ranger reluctantly agreed, vowing, “I will try to leave word in Bree as to where I have gone, as I will likely have moved on by the time of your return to this side of the Misty Mountains.”

Kalin’s squared off shoulders relaxed with Aragorn’s consent; apparently, the sentry had thought Estel might argue against his intentions. They walked the rest of the way without speaking. They had been gone for three or four hours, Estel believed, since it was now after noontime. Because they had given over half of their supplies to Halbarad, Wendt, Tomas, and Jakob to take with them on their journey, and because they were all eager for something other than smoked venison, Elladan and Elrohir had gone hunting for fresh meat while Jakob and Estel had been off digging Legolas’ grave, leaving Reana to stay behind to watch over the Prince. The two brothers had brought back three squirrels, four rabbits, and a bagful of walnuts they had gathered from the ground. Aragorn and Kalin went back to the lake’s shore after first ascertaining the Prince still lived, ere they began washing off the mess they had made upon themselves. Aragorn ended up dunking his whole head under the lake’s surface to get rid of the loose dirt in his hair, and by the time the Silvan sentry and Ranger had washed free the grave dirt upon them, Reana and Elladan had the meat cooking, while Elrohir was in the process of trying to make some broth from lake water and rabbit meat to give to Legolas – should the Elf still be able to swallow it, that was.

He ran his fingers through his damp hair to calm it from its curled, unruly waywardness, and then ambled to where Legolas’ body laid alone. Sitting down beside the Wood-Elf, the Adan took up his lover’s hand and held it, while watching the Noldor finish their tasks. Kalin was using his Prince’s brush to plait his own hair; even though Legolas’ hair was clean from his bath the night previous and had been braided by Kalin after said bath, the Wood-Elf loved to have his hair brushed and played with, and so Estel decided to do this for Legolas, to appease or please the Silvan, should the Elf be capable of knowing of his lover was indulging him.

“Kalin,” he called out to the sentry. Not ceasing his braiding, Kalin walked over to Estel and lifted an eyebrow to question the man. Aragorn asked of him, “When you are done, let me see the brush.”

“Are you alright, brother?” Elrohir called out to him, stopping in his task with a mischievously concerned expression, one mirrored in Elladan’s face when he stopped and looked to Aragorn, as well.

“I’m fine,” he answered in return, while wondering what had prompted this sudden question. “Why?”

Elrohir grinned at the Ranger before he switched his attention to turning the spits on which the meat was skewered. “You just asked for a brush. I wasn’t sure you even knew what one was, much less how to use it. You didn’t hit your head today while you and Kalin were off doing Maker knows what, did you?”

Despite himself, Estel laughed at his brother’s teasing. And then, he promptly felt guilty for doing so while Legolas’ uninhabited body lay lifeless on the ground beside him. _Greenleaf would not want for me to sulk in sorrow,_ he tried to tell himself, though this did not placate his remorse.

“No, no. I didn’t hit my head. And I know what a brush looks like because I recall being hit in the forehead with one by you when I was younger,” he replied, affecting a mendaciously annoyed tone to play along with Elrohir and bringing up a shared memory between the brothers of a time when Elrohir had accidentally hit Aragorn with his brush, squarely between the eyes. “Besides, it is for Greenleaf, not me, and I’m sure Kalin will help me figure out how to use it.”

Elladan and Elrohir both laughed at the younger twin’s jest and Aragorn’s acceptance of it; to Aragorn’s relief, even Kalin was smiling at the teasing brothers. Taking the brush from Kalin, he began the task of unplaiting Legolas’ hair ere trying to brush through it but this proved to be much harder to do with the Elf lying down, and so seeing Aragorn was having trouble, Kalin assisted the Adan by offering, “Just a moment and I will hold him up.”

By sliding his own body under his Prince’s upper half, Kalin did as Aragorn had seen him do several times before when the laegel was injured or insentient by laying Legolas across his folded thighs, the elder Wood-Elf sitting upon his heels. This time, though, Kalin placed an arm behind the younger Silvan’s shoulders rather than letting his Prince’s head lie in the crook of his arm, and thus gave Estel access to Legolas’ long, pale hair. Deftly, and because he’d done this often since becoming the Elf’s lover, Aragorn brushed and plaited Legolas’ hair, though he took his time in doing so, making sure to massage Legolas’ scalp and prolonging the activity so the Wood-Elf’s rhaw would derive as much pleasure as possible from it, if he felt any pleasure from it at all. Once done, he helped Kalin to situate Legolas back upon the bedroll, and by the time this was done, Elrohir had a tepid bowl of rabbit broth, in which miruvor was mixed, at ready to try to feed the younger Wood-Elf.

“Why do we bother?” he asked his brother. He did not intend to sound callous, but it was strange to feed Legolas’ rhaw when his faer was absent and thus could not feel hunger – or so he guessed. He truly did not know, and likely, nor did his brothers. They were all guessing as to the best course in aiding the Prince. “Do we not just prolong the travail of his body as it mends without his soul?”

“We do it because as long as Greenleaf’s heart still beats, we will treat him as if were living.” Elrohir patiently held the bowl out until Aragorn took it. “Besides, who knows? Mayhap his faer is able to feel any discomfort from his rhaw, even in the Awaiting. Of this, we cannot be sure.”

Aragorn had considered this but only vaguely. He had thought Legolas’ rhaw might experience pain or pleasure, but had not truly reflected upon whether the Elf’s faer would be aware of his body’s discomfort or comfort. Of course, he had been treating his lover’s body with kindness, respect, and tender care already because he loved Legolas, though not because he thought the Elf’s faer might be aware of how his rhaw was being treated. Hearing this now, Estel realized he was beginning to see Legolas’ body as a thing, rather than as the corporeal form in which his beloved Greenleaf once existed. It disturbed him. The Edain who had tormented Legolas had thought of the Elf as a thing, as a toy upon which to release their lust and violence. Mithfindl had thought of Legolas as a mere means to the end of his plans for the betterment of his ambitions for the future and for his revenge against Estel. And Thranduil thought of his son as a tool, a thing to be used to maintain his sovereignty. Aragorn did not want to think like any of them, even if unintentionally.

“Won’t he choke on this?” the sentry asked nervously of the broth mixture Aragorn held. “He will just breathe it in, won’t he?”

By then, Elladan joined the sentry and two brothers to watch what occurred, leaving Reana to finish cooking, and so answered Kalin’s question, “We are not sure, though he swallowed well enough last night when we gave something similar to him. From what Elrohir and I have seen of Elves whose faers have fled their rhaws, their bodies still respond on some level to basic functions, such as swallowing and holding their bladders, until they are near their end. We will try to give Greenleaf this nourishment – if he doesn’t swallow it, we will have done all we could for him. But we must try. And if he does not swallow it, we will know his rhaw is soon to perish.”

Estel waited impatiently as Kalin again propped up the Woodland Prince by placing a soft, empty satchel under Legolas’ middle back while holding his fair head up by Legolas’ shoulders and neck, and then took up the small spoon. He would need to be very careful, lest he end up pouring this broth down the Prince’s windpipe. It didn’t matter, Estel supposed, since the Silvan would surely not last much longer, anyway, but he did not want to cause his lover anymore suffering than needed. With his brothers there to gauge whether the Wood-Elf was choking, as well, Aragorn could be sure their greater experience would keep the Adan from drowning Legolas in broth.

The Silvan was lean anyway, but Legolas had not eaten since consuming a few apples a couple of days ago, and the Elf had still not gained back all the weight he had lost from the grief and injury he had endured from the merchants and Mithfindl. Yet, because his body still lived, Legolas’ ribs were mending, even without his faer, thus they did not worry overly much about hurting him by keeping him in this half-sitting position. The Prince’s flesh remained chilly, despite the blankets covering him, the nearby fire, and the comparative warmth of this autumn afternoon, but Legolas’ coloring was relatively normal. All in all, the laegel could have merely been sleeping. It was a tempting daydream to pretend his lover was only in reverie, one Aragorn actively fought against believing, for it would do him no good to allow himself to hope any longer.

He dribbled half a spoonful of the broth, which smelled awful now it was combined with miruvor, into the laegel’s mouth. To his, Kalin, and the twins’ disappointment, Legolas’ body was well and truly insentient, for the Wood-Elf did not swallow. Elladan and Elrohir dropped down beside the Prince, worked together quickly to turn him over and tilt his upper body downwards, and thus helped the unswallowed broth to trickle out of the Wood-Elf’s mouth before it could be breathed further into his lungs. Legolas did not cough any of it out, of course, but the strange rattling sound they might have expected should he have inhaled too much of the broth was absent, so they knew they had not allowed too much liquid into his lungs.

 _Then his body will soon die,_ the Ranger recognized based on what the twins had just told them, with the Noldorin brothers saying an Elf retained some awareness of her body until the end of her life, when the severance of rhaw and faer was absolute and the soul gone entirely. _My poor Legolas,_ the Adan sighed to himself. He bent over and laid his forehead against the Wood-Elf’s forehead. _It may be best, then. I would rather you die soon than starve slowly to death, or waste away from desiccation. I could not bear to see you wither, my Greenleaf._ Tears stung bitterly in the man’s eyes; he closed his eyelids shut against them but the tears escaped nonetheless to patter down upon the Prince’s face. He remained like this for several minutes, breathing in the same air Legolas exhaled, feeling the clammy, cool skin of the Elf’s forehead against his own, which felt feverish in comparison, and trying to infuse the laegel’s body with the vitality from his own soul, as had the Elf done for Estel to save his life from Elise’s degenerative curse. With no faer in the Silvan’s body, it was useless, he knew, but he felt Legolas’ presence, distant though it might be, and so wished for the Prince to know how much Estel loved him, if nothing else, by feeling Aragorn’s soul in contact with his own faer.

Aragorn felt as two hands were placed upon either of his shoulders, one from each twin, as they sought to comfort him. “Come, let us eat, muindor,” a dejected Elrohir suggested, with Elladan adding, “Greenleaf will be fine alone for a few moments. Let us have lunch, then we will make our plans as to what to do.”

Leaning back, Aragorn wiped at the tears on his face. Across from him, Kalin dabbed his own tears away and stood before he walked around the Prince, then aided Aragorn into standing, as well. They followed behind the twins to the fire pit around which Reana was laying meat upon tin plates she had pulled from one of their satchels. It was afternoon, though too early for dinner; yet, they were all still famished from the lack of proper meals over the last couple of days, and more so from the expenditure of energy during their short-lived battle with the villagers. As he sat down beside Kalin, he accepted a plate from Reana and perfunctorily began eating the leg of rabbit and the stringy, gamey bits of squirrel meat she had placed upon the platter for him.

Estel felt remorseful once more – this time for eating when Legolas could not – but it wasn’t as if they hadn’t tried to offer the Prince some sustenance. Still¸ it did little to appease his guilt. It didn’t seem right for them to continue on in their lives, eating, drinking, talking, and making plans for the future, when there was to be no eating, drinking, speaking, or future for Legolas.

Their gathering was morose and silent, except for the occasional appraising comment about the food, or the cracking of one of the walnuts between the two slabs of flat rock Elladan had acquired for this purpose. Eventually, once the brunt of everyone’s hunger was sated, the Noldor and Silvan slowed into pecking at their food so they could speak of the best route to take to get home as quickly as possible. Unspoken but assumed was how Legolas would be dead by then, and thus, they would not be travelling with the laegel’s body. With the Elf’s grave dug already, it was only a matter of waiting for Legolas’ death to occur before they all moved on – with their travel, with their grief, and with their lives, while leaving the Silvan Prince behind them.

Aragorn stopped paying attention to the Eldar around him and allowed his mind to roam back to the memories he and Legolas had made here at the lake. He watched Arato as he did so, idly concerned at how the stallion was tossing his head, gnashing his teeth, and stamping his feet, and then promptly thought, _He knows. Arato knows his master is soon to die._ But then, Legolas had been dying for hours now and Arato had not acted this strangely, which caused Aragorn’s heart to falter when it occurred to him, _It is happening right now and Arato can feel it. Legolas is dying right now._


	49. Chapter 49

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I know I said Legolas' state would be resolved in this chapter, but I couldn't force myself to finish the second half of the intended chapter. So, here is the first half of it. Enjoy fiends. :P

Unlike before, when his faer had been separating from his rhaw, the laegel had not experienced the replaying of fond memories. Nor had he dreamt during his unconsciousness. In fact, one moment, Legolas was a ghost who had been trying to walk to Estel, to see his lover’s face for a final time ere he disappeared; the next moment, Legolas was awake. He could recall nothing in between the two.

The Prince held some vague belief he was a haunt still, and so did not seek to move the body he thought was long since beyond his control. And because of this belief, he idly wondered at the darkness, for he could not see, as he was not aware he once more had real eyes he needed to open in order to see. For a length of time of which Legolas had no concept, there was only an excruciating agony he could not fathom the cause behind, for he had felt nothing as a haunt and expected never to feel again. That he should endure such pain in addition to being stuck as an incorporeal spirit he deemed highly unfair. More imprecise and half-thought out surmises filtered through his pain-hazed cognizance.

It abruptly occurred to the Elf he ought not to feel any pain since he was dead. As far as he knew, he _had been_ dead and was dead even now.

He wondered if he might be in the Halls of Awaiting, if he was being tormented by Námo for some reason, for some transgression of his, as penance for the life he had lived. Although certain he was dead, the particulars were lost to him at first. It took him a while to remember all of what had happened, but worry for Estel surfaced amidst the flotsam clogging his mind, and with this anxiety over his lover’s welfare, all the events of the last few days flooded back to him, washing clean most of his confusion.

_Estel,_ was Legolas’ first truly coherent thought, before he began questioning himself, _Elise destroyed herself to save Estel. Did it work? Please, Eru, let it have worked._

Other than this question, his awareness was riddled with agony beyond his ability to think through easily, such that for a short period longer, Legolas tried to sink back into the unknowingness from which he had come. _Am I no longer a haunt?_ he asked himself, forcing his mind into coherency when it would not give him reprieve by giving back the dark insentience for which he longed. _I must be back in my body. I felt no pain when bodiless. I felt nothing before. I smelled nothing, tasted nothing._

Now, though, Legolas could smell meat roasting over flames, the tangy fragrance of green firewood, the pleasant scent of fresh water upon the mild breeze, the balm of distant fir trees, and the other natural smells of the woods. He could taste something foul in his mouth, which reminded him of boiled meat and miruvor; also, his tongue and lips were parched, his throat ached for water, and his belly was gnawingly empty. When incorporeal, the Elf could still see and hear, yes, and right now, he could hear people talking, the crackling of wood burning, Arato nickering anxiously, and other normal noises of the forest. As for his sight, he reckoned if he were a haunt, he ought to be able to see effortlessly, and if he were back in his body, he ought to be able to open his eyes – yet, he could do neither right now, for his agony was too overwhelming and other than the debilitating pain, he could not sense his body to move it.

_I should not have woken. I should have remained unconscious or asleep,_ he chastised himself, though in truth, he would not want to fall back into reverie or insentience until he knew what became of Estel. Besides, there would be no returning to his unconscious state now – not with excruciation lighting along his body’s every nerve. Nonetheless, the Wood-Elf forced himself to focus upon his body, part by part, to ascertain whether his faer was truly embodied again, or if his suffering was phantom or as it had been while Estel suffered as he died, some sympathetic pains stemming from the Adan’s agony.

It felt to the Silvan as if his every sense was too perceptive, as if his senses were overloaded with the sounds, smells, and tastes of the world around him, which was partially why he did not want to try to open his eyes, for he knew if he did, it would only increase his pain. The more he tried to focus upon himself, the more his discomfort increased, such that above the irritation caused by the rest of his perceptions, the sensations experienced by his body were so profound they were unbearable. His soft, well-worn tunic instead felt like rough bark digging into his too delicate skin, his boots felt to be stifling his feet and constricting his ankles, his braided hair felt to be pulled so tight he thought it would break free from his scalp, every lump in the ground upon which he laid felt like shafts of ice even through the softness of the warm bedroll, and his muscles, having lain unused for a day or so now, were beset by deep, intractable aches.

He briefly considered moving to try to find a more comfortable position, but the thought of doing so frightened him, for if his pain increased by too much more, he feared passing out, and once he did, there was no guarantee he would waken ever again. Legolas desired to lick his dry, chapped lips, but there was no moisture on his tongue with which to do so, nor could he move his tongue to try. He then thought to attempt to speak, to gain someone’s attention so they could bring him water, but he worried if he spoke, his aching head might explode from the added noise to what already sounded to his ears like an unmelodious cacophony. How long he laid this way, miserable and wishing for the death he had seemingly avoided, Legolas could not reason out, but it felt to him like eons, like years longer than the years through which the Elf had actually lived.

Legolas winced instinctively when from across the way, Arato’s agitated whinnying shifted into an awful noise the likes of which the Prince had never before heard from any horse, much less his loyal stallion. It was somewhere between a screech and a nicker, as if the stallion couldn’t decide whether to be frightened or ecstatic. After a few moments of yearning to block out this eerie vociferation from Arato, the Wood-Elf heard Kalin’s voice as he began trying to calm the horse in Sindarin. Upon hearing his sentry, Legolas then tried to listen to what the speaking voices were actually saying, though it aggrieved his ears and mind to do so.

_Maybe I can get their attention without talking,_ he decided.

“What is the matter with Arato?” the sentry asked whoever else was with him.

“He knows,” he heard Estel say. The man’s voice was wavering, as it might were the man moving around rather than sitting still. Aragorn continued forlornly, “He knows Legolas is dying. And I think our Greenleaf has finally reached his end.”

The Wood-Elf’s heart shimmied, stuttered, and then beat wildly with relief. Estel was alive. _Am I dying still?_ he asked himself when he realized what his lover had said. From the pain he felt, it seemed likely enough he was dying, but his own death meant little if Aragorn lived, if he had ultimately managed to save the Adan’s life, though it had been his friendship to Elise to have caused the girl to sacrifice herself on Legolas’ – and thus Estel’s – behalf, rather than some action he had taken on his own. Some of the pain-borne tension seeped from his body, relieving him of a little of the agony, though not much. _Estel lives. Thank you, Ilúvatar._

“I’ve never heard Arato make such a noise,” Kalin told the others, mimicking what Legolas had just thought to himself about the stallion. As if he had not heard Estel or did not want to address the man’s certainty of his Prince’s death, Kalin instead asked, “We didn’t say Legolas’ name while talking about travelling, did we? Arato doesn’t normally act this way unless he is impatient to see Legolas.”

So loudly he could have been shouting into Legolas’ ear, though in truth he was sitting a distance away at the fire, Elrohir suggested, “I don’t think we said Legolas’ name, but Arato loves Legolas madly. Perhaps he is upset because Greenleaf hasn’t spoken to him today or ridden him. I know he is intelligent, but I doubt he understands what is wrong with Legolas.”

Sounding to Legolas as if the Adan were angry with his counsel being ignored, Aragorn reiterated more loudly, his voice no less desolate, “Arato is upset because his master is dying.”

A brief quiet settled over the area, relieving Legolas by its removal of the agony caused to his ears from his friends’ speech. The silence was soon broken, though, by the sounds of brittle, fallen leaves crunching under someone’s feet. And then, the Ranger’s voice was strident enough it might have come from inside Legolas’ head – or so the Elf felt from how it hurt both his head and ears – when Estel demanded of someone, “Move, brother, please. Let me by. I want to be beside Legolas as he dies.”

The telltale sounds of someone walking amidst the scattered, friable leaves grew progressively deafening until it stopped just beside Legolas. He heard leather squeaking and a sorrowed sigh, followed by more rustling leaves as Aragorn presumably knelt down beside the Prince. Legolas felt a hand upon his forehead. In comparison to his algid flesh, the man’s skin felt feverishly hot, as if it might burn him with its heat. The nearness of his beloved Estel made Legolas want to respond despite the threat of more agony, to open his eyes or move his face into the gentle yet unintentionally painful touch; however, the Wood-Elf could not command control over his own body, and he merely laid there in silent torment. His joy to have Estel alive and near did not wane due to his agony.

“Why don’t you take Arato to Greenleaf,” Elladan recommended, his voice booming piercingly in Legolas’ ears such that the laegel predicted it might echo there forever. Only Arato’s increasingly vicious screams were any noisier to the Elf, for the stallion was not yet calmed but growing more agitated. “It may soothe him. We cannot let Arato continue making that racket lest he attracts predators.”

Kalin must have agreed to do as bid, for the sound of Arato’s hooves hitting the leaf-strewn grass of the forest’s floor filtered into the Silvan’s awareness next. Since the stallion was only walking and not running, these footsteps ought normally to be nearly inaudible, but for Legolas, it was like listening to a beating drum advancing upon him. As Kalin brought Arato closer, the Prince heard Estel telling someone in what was meant to be a murmur, though to the laegel, it sounded like a shout as the man bent over to lay his cheek alongside the Prince’s cheek, “He still breathes and his heart still beats, but something feels different. Something feels off. And Arato feels it, as well.” Aragorn sighed, his humid breath rushing past the Elf’s ear, ere he spoke to the Silvan, “I feel you, Greenleaf. I love you.”

The most profound respite the Silvan found since awakening in this pitifully painful existence came to him just then, all from hearing Estel speak while touching him, and thus reaffirming to the laegel his lover was truly well and alive. While Legolas customarily loved the scratchy feel of Aragorn’s bearded cheek upon his own smooth cheek, at present, Estel might well have been pricking the Wood-Elf with thousands of sharp needles everywhere his beard touched the Prince. He wished he could move his head away to avoid this sting, but nevertheless, his body felt foreign to him, as if he were alien to it, and he could only lie there and try to abide the pain.

Kalin replied to the man, the sentry now much nearer than he had been before, “I’ve no doubt you are right, Estel. Arato can feel his Prince’s death. As I said yesterday, I cannot imagine how Arato will carry on when Legolas is dead. I do not want to put him down when he becomes inconsolable, but if he continues to screech like this, we will have no choice,” Kalin rued, no more liking the thought of killing Arato than did Legolas like thinking of Kalin doing it.

It was strange to hear his lover and sentry talk of his death so nonchalantly, as if his demise were a foregone conclusion. Then again, he reminded himself, _But I_ was _dead. For all they know, I still am._ Anguish coursed through his body in unremitting waves carried upon each of his heart’s thunderous beats. He lay motionless with his eyes shut and unmoving, wish though he did for the ability and willpower to open them to look upon Aragorn’s face, or even to shift them in their dry, itching sockets. If what they said were true, if he was dying still and would die now, then he wanted to see Estel’s visage again before he went, as he had not been able to do as a haunt. With great effort, he again concentrated upon his eyes, willing them to open; and again, he could not make his body obey his commands.

Kalin was now tutting and humming at Arato in an attempt to soothe him, while Aragorn warned the elder Wood-Elf of the younger one, “Careful. If Arato becomes upset any further, he may step on Greenleaf.”

“Ornery thing won’t be budged,” the sentry complained of the stallion but then assured the Ranger with fondness for the horse whom he had brought close to his master, “No, Estel, be sure of it – he’d never step on Legolas. Arato would rather break his own leg than step on his Prince.”

True though he knew it to be, Legolas’ heart began to pound from the danger of having his upset stallion beside him while unable to alert the others of his living presence. The laegel heard the leather of Arato’s tack squeak as Kalin tried to force the horse back a bit, but Arato was intent upon putting his muzzle against his master’s face, which when he finally managed to do, caused Arato to let loose a contented nicker so very unlike his screaming from before. The warm wetness of his stallion’s nose, lips, and tongue brushed against the Prince’s cheek and ear briefly, ere Kalin successfully dragged the stallion’s head away, only for Arato to screech again in aggravation and tug the sentry forward so Arato could place his muzzle into Legolas’ face yet again. Each time his horse’s muzzle lightly brushed Legolas’ face, the Wood-Elf’s head felt on the precipice of bursting open, while the prickly hairs upon Arato’s chin felt to be stabbing into Legolas’ sensitive skin. With each of his senses so greatly heightened to unnatural extents, the inadvertent torture of Arato’s affectionate nuzzling brought tears to Legolas’ closed eyes. As much as he knew it would hurt to move, he attempted to shift his face away from Arato’s loving but rough attentions.

And finally, through massive effort and though sluggishly and with much pain, the laegel managed to move his body. The very act of shifting his neck to the side – even if only slightly – took all of the determined Prince’s concentration; however, to Aragorn and Kalin, it appeared Arato had struck the young Elf’s face hard enough to bounce it aside with the stallion’s insistent endeavors to show his devotion to his Prince.

“Be more careful,” the Ranger curtly warned the sentry. “Arato is trouncing Greenleaf’s face too hard. I know he means well,” he spoke of the stallion, protesting, “but let us not allow him to break Greenleaf’s neck, shall we?”

He felt hands upon both his cheeks, the calluses of which scraped against the Elf’s overly irritable skin and felt like someone harshly dragging a dull razor down his face. Aragorn resituated the Silvan’s head so it lay straight upon whatever it was under Legolas’ skull – an empty satchel, he assumed, from the pungent smell of old, well-used leather. More gratingly rowdy sounds assaulted the Prince’s vulnerable ears – of Arato’s heavy breathing and satisfied nickering, of leather squeaking when Kalin tried to move the stallion back again, and of Reana asking Kalin if he needed help. And then, not to be denied access to his master, Arato yanked against Kalin’s hold of his lead so he could bump his nose into Legolas’ nose, which to the Wood-Elf now felt to be broken, though in truth, Arato’s touch had been barely more than a soft caress.

Unable to withstand the excruciating sensations anymore but unable to speak to ask his friends to keep Arato restrained, Legolas ventured to try to move enough to push his stallion away, and thus, he attempted to lift an arm to push at Arato to make him stop, knowing the stallion would do as he bid. _I can achieve this small task,_ he told himself, concentrating upon this minor action as though it were the most difficult feat he had ever tried to accomplish. For all his efforts, Legolas scarcely managed to twitch his fingers, and so tired and cramped were his muscles and so much did it pain him, he did not try again, but instead, let his hand relax back down upon the bedroll under him. Downtrodden at his failure, the Elf had hardly moved the tips of his fingers, but this minute action did not go unnoticed.

“Sweet Ilúvatar. D-did he… w-was…” he heard Estel murmur in a stumbling stutter before the man called out to his brothers at the fire, demanding, “Brothers! Come over here. Now!”

Legolas tried to groan in agony from the volume behind Aragorn’s shout but could not manage to make a single utterance. He speculated over whether he had finally evinced he was alive and aware, or if they now thought he was caught in death throes and Estel wished his brothers to be at the laegel’s side for his demise. At this point, so great was his discomfort, the laegel considered dying might be his only respite. _After all I have done to stay alive these past months – surviving through torture and grief and my father’s hate – and I wish to give in to death now?_ he rebuked himself, feeling uncharitably greedy for his wish for relief in death.

“Did… did he just move?” his sentry whispered in utter disbelief, mirroring Estel’s faltering speech with his own. Not giving Aragorn the chance to reply, Kalin asked in a stumbling susurrus, “Did he… did he move? Did you see his fingers move?”

Elladan and Elrohir could have been two stampeding oliphaunts, so loud were their footsteps when they raced to join the Adan and Silvan sentry. “What is it? What is wrong? You said he was fine,” the younger asked, while the elder continued in accusation of the Ranger ere his twin was even finished speaking, “You said he was breathing well and his heart beat strongly. Is he now dying?”

“He is breathing and yes, his heart still beats. And he just moved. I swear it,” the jubilant, incredulous Ranger replied, his voice cracking with emotion. “He moved his fingers.”

He felt the twins’ relieved aggravation. Already, the two assumed Aragorn and Kalin were mad for believing Legolas’ faer had lingered outside his rhaw, and now, though the twins were glad Legolas’ body was still alive, they found it hard to accept the Prince’s emptied rhaw was capable of movement. Thus, the younger tried to dissuade the Adan and sentry, “You’ve only imagined it. His faer is not here, just his rhaw,” while the elder added, “It may be some involuntary contraction of his muscles as he dies, brothers.”

Overwhelmed with harrowing agony, Legolas felt as the tears welling up in his eyes began to spill over to run down his cheeks. Even the sensation of his weeping made his skin hurt, as though his tears were made of acid, burning his dry, aching eyes and his cheeks, as well. A fingertip gently rested upon one of his eyelids, tenderly sliding it back to reveal the cerulean orb underneath, before letting it slide back shut. The day was not terribly bright – what with the autumn sun hiding in the overcast sky and the stark branches of the oak above him blocking most of Anor’s light – but it might well have been the sun into which he stared, so bright did it seem to the Prince in that brief moment. When the same finger performed the same exploratory action upon his other lid, Legolas rolled his exposed eye away, trying to close his lid against the glaring illumination burning his vision. At once, the finger was removed and his lid slid back shut. Indeed, the laegel’s breathing hitched when he sighed nearly noiselessly with desperate relief.

“By Eru, you are right,” Elladan whispered, conceding the veracity of the Ranger and sentry’s observations. Had they any doubt of whether Kalin and Aragorn had truly seen Legolas move his hand a moment ago, they now had evidence themselves, for both twins could see the young Silvan’s weeping, taken note of how his eye rolled away from the light, and so the twins knew the Woodland Prince was at least more sentient than he had been since his faer abandoned his rhaw. What this meant, he could not guess, as was evinced by Elrohir wondering aloud, “His rhaw should not be doing this without his faer.”

“Greenleaf?” the Ranger asked. “Greenleaf. Can you hear me?”

Unable to see who stood and knelt around him, Legolas confirmed by the voluminous noises of his friends’ breathing and moving about that Kalin, Estel, Elladan, and Elrohir were the ones at his side; a sniffle slightly farther away told him Reana was watching all this at a distance. The other Rangers and Wendt he could not hear. He yearned to speak to his lover to show the man he heard him, but could not. With much more application than it ought to have taken, Legolas managed to shift his heavy, aching head, lowering his chin towards his chest and then slowly bringing it back up. It was the best nod he could perform currently, but they all saw it, and they all knew it for what it was – a response to Aragorn’s query.

In his joy to see Legolas alive, awake, and aware, Estel bent low, gathered the Wood-Elf in his arms, and brought him to his chest, hugging the Silvan tightly to his torso. Legolas’ head fell back, his arms hung lax, and he groaned instinctually at the increased agony this caused him. He soon felt hands on him elsewhere, with the twins touching him to check his temperature and heartbeat, but also just to handle him for their own assurance of their friend’s life. Kalin placed his hand behind his Prince’s neck to hold it aloft, as one would a newborn child unable to keep her own head steady. Unable to communicate with them, Legolas could not tell his friends and lover how much torture they caused him with their gentle, well-intentioned caresses.

Yet, being more attuned to his lover since Legolas had shared his faer with the human, Estel could now sense the Wood-Elf’s agony, though he did not understand the cause of it. He also heard the slight whistling coming from the Silvan’s throat; this whistling might have been whimpers of excruciation, had Legolas the strength to put any force behind them. At once, Aragorn muscled the Elf away from everyone else’s touch and laid the Prince back upon the bedroll, telling his brothers and the sentry, “He is in pain. Sweet Eru, Greenleaf,” he now said to the laegel, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to aggravate your ribs,” he apologized, guessing wrong the cause for the Prince’s agony.

“We’re sorry, as well, brother,” Elladan whispered to the Silvan Elf on his and his twin’s behalf. Incapable of opening his eyes, he could not see the twins’ identically besorrowed faces, but knowing them as well as he did, Legolas could imagine the distress upon their visages at realizing they had caused their Silvan brother any discomfort. He could also hear it in their voices, especially when Elrohir suggested to the Prince, “Let us set you back to rights.”

With feather-light touches, the twins aided Kalin in moving Legolas’ body back into some semblance of comfort, though the Woodland Prince was without ease, and their moving him only increased his pain tenfold. Before they were done, Legolas’ unused muscles began to twitch from cramping, but also in response to the pain racing through the rest of his body. He thought of the paroxysmal fit in which his body was mired and compared it to how Aragorn had appeared just before the Elf had lost all sense of time and self, on the farm, just after Elise ended herself.

_I am doing now what Estel did while dying. Maybe I will die yet._

His sentry must have decided the same, for Kalin suddenly worried, “Do you think he is still under Elise’s curse? He looks like you did when you were dying,” he told Estel. The elder Wood-Elf’s hand clamped firmly down upon the younger Wood-Elf’s lower forearm, feeling to Legolas like a vise was closed upon his flesh and bone hard enough to snap his limb off at the wrist.

_Please let go, Kalin,_ he wanted to tell his sentry. If Kalin knew how much agony his touch brought his Prince, the guard would never forgive himself. But none of them had any reason to believe their handling was causing the Wood-Elf this suffering, save for their belief his broken ribs were aching.

Estel did not answer. He could imagine the Ranger looking to his twin brothers for their thoughts on this matter, and it must have been what the man did, for Legolas soon heard Elrohir sniffle ere Elladan ventured to those around him, “I hate to say it, but Greenleaf may still be dying. Just because his faer has returned to his rhaw does not mean he is well.”

“No,” Aragorn denounced at once. The Adan’s voice grew softer even as he came nearer to the Wood-Elf, ere he placed his forehead against the Silvan’s own forehead to whisper to the laegel, “You came back to me. You said you would, Greenleaf. You said you would always come back to me if you could. You cannot leave me now.”

Legolas had no intentions of leaving – not if he could help it – though he wasn’t sure if the choice was his anymore.


	50. Chapter 50

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second half of the last chapter. I really ought to just write, "And then Legolas died and everyone cried real big big."

Arato was seemingly pacified enough now he had seen his master, and so finally allowed Kalin to remove him from the way, though the stallion would not be moved far; no, Arato stopped after being led away only a few feet. Kalin did not argue with the balking horse. It would do no good. Nor did he bother tying the stallion’s lead to a nearby tree. Arato would not wander far without Legolas, not even should the Dark Lord himself come visiting. It soothed the laegel to have his horse calmed; the sound Arato had made when distressed had worn on the Wood-Elf’s already aggrieved heart.

To the Prince’s utmost relief, someone soon held a skin of water to his mouth; for the first time since waking, his body moved effortlessly, relying on instinct alone and needing no concentration upon his part in its desperation to sate the desiccation of his mouth and throat. Legolas’ lips parted, his brow furrowed, and he swallowed eagerly every drop of water dribbled into his mouth. As he felt the opening of the waterskin leave his lips, the laegel’s mouth tried to follow it, to obtain more of the liquid before it was taken away. Before long, however, the recognizable, round, smooth rim of a glass flask took the skin’s place, and next, someone trickled miruvor into his gullet, which he swallowed down just as eagerly. When the waterskin was replaced with the glass phial once again, whoever held it to his lips allowed him to drink from it fully; he stopped only when the effort of keeping his head up became too much for his strained neck muscles. Sated for the moment, at least, he let his weary head fall back onto the satchel upon which it had been resting.

Since Estel’s asking of him not to leave him and his reminder to the Prince of his promise to the Adan to come back to him if he could, Legolas had been trying to gain greater awareness while combatting the fatiguing debilitation caused by his body’s torment. It was hard, however, for as with most creatures when in great pain, the Wood-Elf longed for sleep. He desired most to regain the insentience from which he had woken so he would not be ensconced in this excruciation any longer. But since he had earlier thought if he fell back into unawareness that he might never again awake from it, and since the twins seemed certain the Silvan was still dying, even though his faer had miraculously returned to its rhaw, Legolas was ever more cognizant that succumbing to the peace of unconsciousness would be his end.

“Stay awake, meleth nin,” the Adan whispered to the Elf. Aragorn felt much the same as the Silvan, believing the Prince might die should he give in to insentience, and so spoke to Legolas continuously while the twins and sentry spoke around them of what to do for the failing Wood-Elf. His normally low and husky voice even more hoarse from the silent weeping the man was doing, Estel pled with the Silvan, “Just stay awake and with me.”

A lull in the Elves’ conversation came, and as he thought about what to do, Kalin devotedly ran his fingers over the furrow in his Prince’s brow. He was promptly confused when Legolas frowned and tried to move his face away from this gentle touch. When next Aragorn attempted to stroke the Wood-Elf’s cheek, offering words of comfort as he did so, Legolas groaned faintly and tried to avoid this contact, as well.

“What is wrong with him?” Kalin inquired, looking to Estel for this answer, since the sentry was well aware the Ranger knew his Prince better than did he these days.

The Ranger removed his hand quickly from his lover’s cheek and commented forlornly, “He does not want us touching him, I think.”

“Do you think he is caught in grief? He did the same when the scar spoke, remember?” Legolas heard the younger Noldo ask of his brothers.

The mention of this silenced everyone, for if Legolas were caught in grief, then the question of whether Elise’s imprecation was removed would be moot, for sorrow alone could take the Prince away from them. _Open your eyes,_ he tried to induce of himself. _Open your eyes and try to speak to them. Tell them what is wrong._ But the Wood-Elf failed at convincing himself, for his fear of increasing his pain kept his body from responding. Slowly but surely, though, the miruvor was doing its work, and he could feel its false but welcome strength rejuvenating his overtaxed rhaw. _Soon. Soon I will be able to open my eyes,_ he told himself as he tried in vain to coerce his tongue into licking his dry lips.

“He killed the villagers and destroyed Elise,” Kalin reminded them, though he was incorrect in this belief, as were they all. Unable to see any of them, Legolas had no trouble imagining each of his friend’s faces during this conversation, and he could see in his mind’s eye Kalin’s worried visage as the sentry reasoned to the others, “It would never sit well with my Prince to have taken those men’s lives. If he is grieving, perhaps that is why.”

As he could not speak to answer them, they spoke around him, about him, as if he were a sick child or some inanimate object, all of which aggravated the comfortless Wood-Elf to no end. They had done this to him often enough over the last months, when Legolas was truly caught in the web of sorrow from the misfortunes fallen on him and the vile deeds perpetrated against him, and they all had to know how aggravating it was for Legolas. Knowing this did not stop them, for they were too intent upon aiding the Silvan to care for not hurting his feelings. And how could he hold it against his friends when he was incapable of speaking to them to set them straight?

Piping up with his own opinion, which the twins and sentry took more seriously than they had earlier, Aragorn countered, “No, it is not grief. It is pain. He is in agony,” he explained to his brothers and the Silvan, trying to make them understand what he did not quite understand himself, “I do not know what is causing his torment, but I think just our slightest touch hurts him. We need to be careful of how we move him. If his pain becomes so great he passes out, he might not waken again,” the Ranger warned, speaking aloud his fear for Legolas.

Lying there motionless in hopes of doing so easing his twitching, spasming, aching muscles, the Silvan wished he could speak to agree with Aragorn. He was no more certain of why his body hurt than was Estel, but hurt it did. If it had been injury to have caused his excruciation, the twins might have been able to treat it, but without some wound to tend, they were all at a loss. Luckily for Legolas, though, the rejuvenescent effects of the miruvor he had imbibed were mounting; while it did not do much to ease his pain, it did fortify his body and his command over it, such that Legolas cleared his throat with a harsh bark and murmured, “Estel.”

One of his friends let out a soft cry upon hearing this, their joy contagious to the others, all of whom were buoyed by this simple action and made their own heartened declarations of happy sighs and short-lived laughter. They quieted quickly in hopes of hearing Legolas say more. For now, Legolas could not find the strength to speak again just yet, but he found it easy to groan loudly when his lower legs began cramping again, causing his whole body to shake once more. A twin was soon kneeling on either side of his lower limbs, where together they took hold of his calves and began gently massaging the tightened muscles in hopes of loosening them. While their touches hurt in their own way, they also eased the cramping, and so Legolas sighed in relief at their work.

“Greenleaf.” Aragorn’s hands were flitting around the Prince, wishing to touch him to comfort him; Legolas could tell this by sense alone rather than sight. “Greenleaf, what do you need? What can we do for you?”

He thought upon this question for a moment. The miruvor helped but Legolas wanted relief; and so, after a few minutes of silence broken only by the rustling of leaves around where the twins continued to palpate the constricted muscles of his legs, the Elf managed to focus his mind and mouth enough to say a single word. He whispered nearly unintelligibly, “Poppy.”

“Poppy?” Elladan inquired of Legolas, ceasing his massaging, which earned him a whimper of pain but also a slight nod from the Wood-Elf. Elladan took up his palpation again.

“The milk of the poppy?” Elrohir wondered in surprise, which in fact was how they all felt, for it was unlike Legolas to ask for the tincture.

Even if he were dying and his body rent in pieces, Legolas would typically choose to avoid the milk of the poppy; this was especially so after recent events. It was with this in mind Kalin determined, “His pain must be extreme if he is _asking_ for the poppy extract.”

Neither twin stopped their massaging, Kalin and Estel remained beside him, and so Legolas concluded it must be Reana who fetched the poppy from one of the twin’s bags. He heard it being uncorked after she removed the wax seal from its top, which kept it from leaking while in travel. As before, every sound was amplified to deafening levels, as was his sense of smell, for ere she even brought the phial close, he could smell the potent scent of the poppy long before her footsteps grew close enough for her to kneel beside Kalin. Soon, another glass phial’s rim was placed upon his lips.

He drank from it deeply, imbibing as much as they would give him, until Elladan stopped the she-Elf by saying, “Enough, Reana. We don’t want him passing out from it if it can be helped.”

Almost instantly, the Wood-Elf began to feel some relief from his pain, though some of this release was only from the mere expectation of it relaxing his body from the torturous fetters in which it was bound. The obfuscation of his thoughts was a side-effect having been proved detrimental when he had been forced to take the tincture by Mithfindl, but here amongst his trusted friends, Legolas was more than willing to lose himself in confusion if it meant he no longer had to deal with the excruciation of his rhaw. They would take care of him; he did not doubt it in the least.

_Stay awake, Legolas,_ he told himself even as his mind began to cloud over and his will to follow his own commands lessened. _Stay awake and with Estel. Stay awake at least long enough to open your eyes and see his face again before you die,_ he bargained with himself, for although he was unsure if he would die, he was not taking the chance of moving on to his Awaiting before having the opportunity to see his lover one more time.

He writhed and shifted slightly upon the bedroll, his body trying in vain to find some comfortable position, but the agonized laegel could do nothing to ease his tenebrific agony further, and it began to pull him back into the darkness of oblivion. As the twins tried their best to ease his aching rhaw by massage and his sentry and Estel offered their ameliorative presence to his comfortless faer, the poppy began to do its work more fully, the respite flowing along with the blood in his body, soothing him in gentle, lapping waves, until the decrease of pain and the laegel’s clouded mind allowed his harried thoughts to wander away from focusing upon the sheer austerity of his torment.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While he was gladdened to see Legolas’ beautiful features begin to clear of the lines of strain around his eyes and mouth – lines made by his effort to endure the inexplicable agony he endured – Aragorn was also greatly confused as to the cause of his lover’s plight. As Kalin had said, the Wood-Elf Prince must truly be in intractable agony to ask for the milk of the poppy.

“Come, brother,” Elrohir told his twin. He ceased his milling of the laegel’s calves and ankles, which had finally stopped twitching in discomfort, and stood, holding his hand out to Elladan to pull him to his feet. “Let us look through our bags for anything of use to Greenleaf. He cannot subsist on poppy medicines alone.”

Elladan and Elrohir walked the short distance to their satchels, pulling them from the pile and settling in the sunlight to search for some mixture they might concoct to aid Legolas. Kalin and Estel remained at the Prince’s side in vigil over the Elf. For the sentry and Ranger, Legolas’ pain might as well be their own; both would rather be enduring the agony through which the Prince suffered than let Legolas suffer a moment more. Kalin and Aragorn startled when Legolas whimpered and his arms jerked as if the cramps were now commencing there rather than his legs. Without conferring, Kalin took one arm while Estel took the other, and the two dutifully began massaging Legolas’ arms as had the twins done to Legolas’ legs. Although the younger Wood-Elf continued to whine in pain low in his throat, which broke both Estel and Kalin’s hearts to hear and know they were causing in part, neither stopped until the cramping and twitching ceased, which was also when Legolas’ soft whimpers ended, as well.

Aragorn was reminded of the day in Rivendell when they had lost track of Legolas’ whereabouts, leaving him to Galendil’s care in the garden, which was where Mithfindl had found, attacked, and nearly killed the Prince. Estel recalled clearly – especially as he often dreamt terrible, vivid nightmares replaying this – of how Legolas had lain in his bed, his body blackened with bruising, his belly swollen from internal injury, his mind unable to give in to sleep because of his pain and Mithfindl’s instruction, and his tired voice pleading with Estel for something the laegel had not been able to name. Legolas had been in fatal, continuous, unbearable pain that day; only a while later did the Ranger understand his lover had been begging for him to end his suffering by killing him. Elrond’s use of vilya had terminated the Prince’s agony that awful day, but here in the wilds, there was no Elrond to do so, and for that matter, there were no dire injuries to heal. Indeed, Aragorn considered how Legolas looked much the same now as he had after being despoilt and battered by Mithfindl, though not because of bruises or swelling to his person, but because of the obvious torment written across the Elf’s fair, normally cheerful face.

Estel sat there watching Legolas’ every squirm, shudder, and breath. Once more, he thought of and agreed wholeheartedly with Kalin’s inference, thinking, _Yes, for Greenleaf to want the milk of the poppy, even after the numbness of the scar and after Mithfindl used it to gain control of Legolas’ mind, Greenleaf must be desperate to alleviate his discomfort._ Not even after being raped and beaten almost to death in the garden had the Prince wanted the milk of the poppy, though he had been in enough agony to be granted it; if Legolas hurt worse now than he had then, the Prince was in poor shape to be sure.

This conjecture reopened a different line of questioning, however, which was one he asked aloud to his brothers, speaking to them where they sat discussing quietly the herbs they had and how best to mix and administer them, “What do you think is causing this agony? His ribs must hurt, but surely not so much he would be writhing with it.”

The identical brothers ignored Estel for a few moments as they passed herbs and back and forth for whatever mixture they intended to make; yet, they had heard the man and eventually, Elladan responded, sparing Estel only a fervidly bewildered glance ere he turned back to his task. He told his human sibling, “We do not know, muindor, but then, neither of us has ever seen an Elf whose faer returned to its rhaw once released. It is unheard of, for the most part. Or at least to us it is. Perhaps if Ada were here, he would know of it and know what to do.”

Elrohir looked at Aragorn briefly just as had his twin, amending Elladan’s statement by saying, “Well, we personally know no one who has returned to his rhaw except for Glorfindel, but even he went to Mandos and was re-embodied, then came from Valinor to Arda. He did not return to the body he had when he died, so it isn’t truly the same. But perhaps if he were here, he could offer some insight into Greenleaf’s condition,” the younger twin rued.

Aragorn looked from twin to twin, hoping this was not the end of their conjecture, but it seemed they truly had no more knowledge to impart on the topic. They returned to their self-appointed jobs of mixing and grinding and measuring, doing what they could to find some way to ease Legolas’ agony. _I would that Ada and Glorfindel were here as well,_ the Adan considered. He reached out to smooth the hair lying across Legolas’ temple and stopped himself just in time before his fingers touched the Elf. It was so very difficult for him not to offer ease to the Wood-Elf by his touch.

“Estel,” came a susurrus from beside the man. He leant down to place his face directly in the laegel’s view while hoping to see Legolas had finally opened his eyes, but the Wood-Elf’s azure gaze was still hidden. He could hear the pain in the Silvan’s broken speech. Just saying ‘Estel’ seemed to have caused Legolas immense pain.

“What is it, Greenleaf? What do you need? Anything, meleth nin,” he declared, fully meaning it, too. Had Legolas asked him to find and slay a dragon for a single toenail in hopes of it making the Prince feel the slightest bit better, Aragorn would have done his damnedest to see it done.

“Please, Estel,” the Elf pled shamelessly. Legolas was a proud Elf; Legolas never besought anything for himself, though he had begged on behalf of his loved ones, such as when he had beseeched the human merchants Cort and Sven to leave Aragorn unharmed when they were caught unawares outside Lake-town months earlier. To hear the Elf’s blatant begging now wounded the Ranger’s heart. Legolas tried to turn his face towards where he thought Estel to be based on the origin of the man’s voice, while the lines around the Silvan’s eyes and mouth came back with the apparent return of his pain. “More. More poppy. Estel, please. It hurts.”

The Ranger felt as though someone had sucker punched him in the chest. To see Legolas in so much excruciation was unbearable for the man. He looked to his brothers, who were shaking their heads at him. While they did not want to overdose the Prince and potentially put him into slumber, as had Mithfindl done to Thranduil in his plans for revenge and ambition, they also did not want for the Wood-Elf to depend upon the medicines for relief, when they were quite sure there was no physical cause for the younger Elda’s agony. It unsettled the man to deny his lover anything, especially with Legolas in this state; nonetheless, though he hated having to tell his lover no, it was for the laegel’s own good.

“Not yet, Greenleaf. You have taken too much as it is,” he reasoned with the Prince. “You must wait a while before you have more.”

Grunting in discomfort as he tried to lift his hand to grab hold of the Ranger’s arm, Legolas was aided by the Adan in joining their hands together. Wrapping his fingers loosely around the man’s digits, Legolas grumbled a nearly complete sentence, much to Estel’s delight to hear, as thus far, the Elf had barely managed to speak in simple phrases, “Then knock me out. I cannot bear this, Estel. I can’t live with this pain. Please, Estel.”

“You know I will not,” he replied, wishing with all his being he could do as asked, for he would do anything to ease the Silvan’s agony save for kill him or hurt him further, and knocking him out would chance doing both. Helplessly looking to Kalin for some advice and finding the sentry as helpless as was he, Aragorn pled with Legolas to be understood, “Anything, Greenleaf. I will do anything for you except hurt you further, and knocking you out or giving you more poppy right now would harm you, meleth nin.”

The Wood-Elf seemed to accept this, though he pulled his hand away from Estel’s limb and dropped it lifelessly back on the ground. Legolas twisted the cloth of the bedroll upon which he laid between his fingers; his long, elegant digits soon became bloodlessly white due to the strength with which he gripped the bedroll as a new bout of excruciation took the Elf by rapacious force.

Obliged to do nothing while the Wood-Elf suffered, Aragorn lost track of time, and for several hours, Estel sat beside Legolas, watching the Prince writhe and whimper as the unknown force behind his torment continued to afflict the Prince. Kalin sat on the other side, doing much as did Estel in merely keeping his gaze upon his charge, wincing with every indication Legolas was in pain, shuddering when the laegel cried out from his agony, and with Estel’s help, occasionally massaging the younger Wood-Elf’s arms and legs when his muscles began to cramp.

During this vigil, the twins twice gave Legolas more miruvor in which was mixed a little more milk of the poppy. For a brief period after imbibing the poppy medicines, Legolas would calm, and the Ranger and sentry would calm along with him, for they could not relax, eat, sleep, or so much as make conversation with Legolas suffering between them. The twins had not been idle during this time, though, and had stockpiled their and Aragorn’s herbs together. They made a mixture they ground and steeped, the medicines giving off a pungently green smell that overran the natural smells of the lake and clearing. While this mixture was not as potent in its ability to relieve pain as was the poppy tincture, it would have to do, for the twins gave the milk of the poppy to Legolas with great reluctance; but also, Elladan and Elrohir did not typically carry much of the poppy medicines upon them while travelling, and thus would run out soon if Legolas continued to suffer as much as he seemed to be suffering now.

After spending the whole of the time since Legolas’ wakening in observation over his lover, Aragorn saw that the twins were finished with their experimentation. They brought the flask of foul liquid to the Prince. Trusting the identical Noldor completely, the Wood-Elf drank the herbal medicines gladly, as he was more than likely happy to have more to drink, since he could not seem to drink enough. Legolas did not complain of the smell or taste, which must have been foul, but since he was assured by the twins it would ease his pain, Legolas did not hesitate until he had consumed as much as Elladan and Elrohir saw as a fit dosage. It was clear to all of them how much discomfort the laegel continued to experience. Try as Legolas did to be brave and not beg for more of the poppy, he was on the brink of madness from the agony – as were Aragorn and Kalin, who were truly tormenting themselves by remaining at Legolas’ side during his ordeal.

With the new mixture consumed by the Prince, the twins huddled around Legolas, just as close as were Estel and Kalin, to keep watch over what effects their brew had upon the laegel. Meanwhile, Reana took it upon herself to do all the tasks necessary to prepare for the coming night – such as watering and feeding the horses, gathering firewood, and looking for food for their evening meal. While she was more than welcome to join them at Legolas’ side, she did not know the Prince as did they, and likely did not want to intrude. Yet, she was just as surprised and overjoyed as were they for Legolas to be alive and aware, his faer once more inside his rhaw, and even as she went about her chores, she would wipe a tear from her smiling face on occasion, and often she came to Kalin and touched him in the way of a lover, which made the all-consuming fear upon the sentry’s face lessen bit by bit.

When the evening turned to dusk, they did not even move away from the Wood-Elf while eating, but gladly allowed Reana to serve them by bringing each of them a plate, and when done, they thanked her and let her clean up the mess without offering their help. To their surprise, Legolas had a relatively lucid moment while they ate around the Prince, and though the laegel still had not opened his eyes, Legolas’ nose had twitched and sniffed towards the smell of food, which had caused Aragorn to smile with simple pleasure. It had been good to see Legolas was hungry, for if the Prince wanted to eat, it meant his rhaw was not intent on starving itself. Thus, Aragorn had happily shared his rabbit stew with the Elf, but because he and the twins were unsure if the Silvan could withstand the effort of chewing, Aragorn had mostly spooned broth into his lover’s eager mouth.

Through all this time, Legolas did not sleep. He remained awake, his pain too great to allow him any rest. The Eldar and Adan were caught between wishing the Prince would sleep, as it would give him a reprieve from his agony, and wishing the young Silvan would remain awake to ensure he did not lapse back into the comatose condition from which he had woken. Who was to say the Elf’s faer was firmly ensconced in his rhaw once more? At any moment, the two might sever, and this time, they could not expect a second miracle to bring the Wood-Elf’s soul back to his body.

And now, with the evening coming to an end and the darkness of twilight mounting into a nearly moonless night, Elladan told Kalin and Aragorn, speaking for his twin and Reana in suggesting, “We will rotate taking watch, brothers.”

“Lie down, Estel, and rest,” the younger twin needled the Adan. At the moment, having just eaten a bit after drinking the twins’ potion, Legolas was relatively calm. His legs and arms were still, having been relaxed by something in the twins’ concoction, and he was not whimpering in agony for the nonce. Elrohir saw this, as did Estel and the others, and pointed it out to the Ranger by saying, “You need gainful sleep as much as does Greenleaf, and now would be a good time to try, with Legolas relaxed.”

Without being asked, Kalin promised Estel, “If you do fall asleep, I will wake you should anything happen.”

He knew Kalin would keep this oath, for the elder Wood-Elf would not fall into reverie this night, either, but as he had last night, Kalin would stay awake in watch over his Prince. _I do need to sleep,_ he decided. Aragorn was worn out, both physically and emotionally. As far as the Ranger was concerned, he had witnessed a true wonder today. _Eru himself had a hand in Greenleaf’s return to us, surely,_ the Adan thought as he silently, tiredly let his brothers lay another bedroll beside the Prince’s bedroll. _Thank you,_ he prayed to Ilúvatar, though he beseeched the creator of all things, who seemed to have a greater purpose for Legolas for the maker to have brought the Wood-Elf back from death, _but please, let this ailment pass and give Greenleaf some relief._ It was disconcerting for Aragorn to be ecstatic to have Legolas alive, since he had been sure the Elf would die, but then also, for the laegel to be in so much pain Legolas was likely wishing he had died instead.

His bed made and the others prepared to take care of everything, leaving Aragorn with nothing to do but as he had been doing all this day – observing his Elven lover and keeping the suffering Wood-Elf company – Aragorn stretched out beside Legolas, intending to share his warmth with the still chilly Elf, but he scooted too close and ended up bumping against Legolas’ side, which caused the awake but pain and medicine addled Elf to grunt.

“Don’t. Please, Estel. Don’t touch me. It hurts. Everything hurts,” the Wood-Elf whispered, sounding sorry to be asking this of the Ranger. Legolas likely wanted Estel’s comforting touch as much as Aragorn wanted to touch the Elf to comfort him, and neither of them could stand not being able to do so.

“Goheno nin, Greenleaf,” he responded at once and shifted away from the Prince. Even as he said the words, the Ranger had to catch himself as his hand acted of its own accord and sought to smooth the worrisome, weary lines of pain upon the Prince’s brow. “I will go lay over there,” he offered in fear that in his sleep, should he succeed in sleeping, Aragorn might accidentally roll into the laegel and cause him undue torment from merely brushing up against the Wood-Elf.

Despite his pain, Legolas shook his head in the negative and murmured brokenly to the Ranger, “No, Estel, please. Stay here with me. You need to rest. Do not leave me, please.”

_It is so much like Greenleaf to worry over my welfare when he lies here tortured by this affliction,_ the man thought, his chest swelling with love for the selfless, loyal Elf to whom he had given his heart, soul, and future.

“Do not worry, I will watch over you, as well,” Kalin offered to Estel. The elder Wood-Elf had barely moved all through the last night and today, save for the occasional shift when his legs or rear began to fall asleep from lack of circulation. Giving Aragorn an ephemeral smile, he promised, “If you roll near him, I will wake you or try to move you before you get too close.”

Above all else, for Estel it was heartbreakingly hard for the man not to touch his lover. He wanted most to comfort the Elf, to assure himself of Legolas’ living with constant physical contact. More carefully this time, Aragorn laid down on the bedroll, getting as close to the Prince as he could without coming into contact with him. Legolas wanted him near, so the Ranger would stay here beside him. Whatever it took to aid the Silvan, Aragorn would do. And with Kalin ensuring the man did not hurt the Prince in his sleep, Estel’s fierce worry diminished.

Again, Legolas whispered to the Adan, who had yet to respond to his beseeching the Adan to stay beside him a moment ago. “Do not leave me, Estel. Please.”

“I am not leaving you, Greenleaf. Ever. I will be right here with you, now and for always,” he promised, though of course, this oath was a lie and they both knew it. He could no more promise this than could the Wood-Elf, but it solaced them both to hear it aloud. Legolas sighed in relief, while his eyelids fluttered for a moment.

The Ranger tensed in optimistic expectation to see his lover’s cerulean gaze for the first time in well over a day, but Legolas could not seem to force his eyelids to open – not just yet. Estel settled onto his side, folded an arm under his head, and prepared himself for watching the Silvan throughout the night.


	51. Chapter 51

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been writing a story for myself. It is in the arc of this series, but I swear to Eru, I am not posting the sonuvabitch, because it is already a doozy, and I haven't even finished this one. But it has really captivated me because it is a young Legolas/twins story, and I am having so much fun writing them as Elflings that it is consuming all of my writing time, little as it already is. 
> 
> I say this to tell you I am so very distracted by this new story that I fear my updates to this story will start to falter. Poke me if I go too long before updating, dears, and enjoy.

He had not intended to fall asleep and had not thought he would able to, but apparently, the Ranger had slipped into slumber while watching over the Wood-Elf Prince. He woke to the sound of Legolas whining in pain; in fact, the Silvan sounded faintly like a frightened and wounded dog, moaning low in his throat but high in pitch. He had never heard Legolas sound this way, for usually, the Woodland warrior was accustomed to and able to endure great pain. The Elvenking had conditioned the Prince for such. It frightened the man to realize just how much agony his lover suffered, when the proud Prince would normally hide any evidence of his torment. Aragorn laid as he was, facing Legolas, who was turned away from him and to where the twins stood behind Kalin, arguing with the laegel. It seemed Legolas was better able to communicate with them, for his scattered words of before were now full sentences.

“It hurts,” the laegel tried to explain, his voice cracking as a shudder of excruciating discomfort wracked his lithe frame. “Please, Elrohir,” he begged the Noldo, then the other, “Elladan, make this stop. I cannot endure this much longer. Do something to make this stop, please. Render me unconscious. Kill me if there is no other way. I cannot take it.”

They spoke softly, likely in the attempt to keep from waking Aragorn, but since he was awake, he quickly rose from sitting to evince his awareness and also to hear better what was being said, though he took great care not to jar the Wood-Elf’s body as he did so. Having heard his lover wish aloud to be killed just to avoid any more suffering tore at Aragorn’s heart, and though he knew his brothers would never accede to this wish, he feared Kalin might should his Prince ask it of him; moreover, should Legolas be able to move, he might take matters into his own hands to end his suffering by ending his life. The very thought caused Estel’s sleepiness to evaporate instantly.

“What does, Greenleaf?” the younger twin asked, glancing at Estel as he did in acknowledgement of the Adan’s wakened presence. “We do not understand. What hurts?”

Having heard the human sit up, the Wood-Elf turned his head – his eyes closed – towards the man and gave him an ephemeral smile, one displaying his love and affection for the Adan, but one unable to hide the torment through which the Elf suffered even now. And then, finally, and much to Aragorn’s joy, the Wood-Elf pried open his lids slowly and carefully, as if the act hurt him immensely, and looked at his beloved Ranger. Though bloodshot and obviously exhausted, the laegel’s cerulean eyes were a beautiful sight for Estel to behold, especially when Legolas settled them upon the man. He had thought the day before he would never again see his lover’s gaze upon him with the love and sentience they held for him now. His hope burgeoned evermore, even while the laegel soon squinted as if the dark of night were too bright for him, though the only illumination, save for the tiny sliver of Ithil overhead, came from the embers of the dying fire across the way. When Legolas closed his eyes with a groan of pain, Estel was no less pleased, as the Wood-Elf was still smiling at the man; in fact, Legolas appeared even more content and happy than before he had opened his eyes. Had Aragorn known why – that is, Legolas was pleased he had been able to see his lover this one last time – then the Ranger would not have allowed his exuberant optimism to flourish as he did.

Legolas soon rolled his head back to the twins and Kalin to answer the question put to him, “Everything. Everything hurts. I cannot take this any longer.”

“Your ribs I can fathom paining you, but you are not injured anywhere else,” the elder twin speculated, seeking to understand from where the laegel’s agony stemmed so it could be staunched. As one, the two brothers knelt down on either side of Kalin so they would be nearer to the Prince.

Aragorn scooted a bit closer to the Prince, also, while reaching out for him automatically when he saw tears rolling down his lover’s cheeks. He stopped himself at the last moment before coming into contact with the Elf. It was so very difficult to see Legolas weeping in pain but be unable to comfort him, much less stop his agony. He felt like weeping, as well, and in fact, at hearing a soft sniffle, he looked up to see Kalin was weeping unabashedly, likely at his own inability to be of aid to his ailing charge.

Shaking his head against where it laid upon the satchel, Legolas attempted to explain that which he was unsure of himself, “When outside my rhaw, I felt nothing. No pain, no cold… nothing. I could smell nothing. I could only hear and see,” he explicated impatiently. The Wood-Elf took a deep breath in an attempt to calm another bout of spasming from his muscles. “Now I feel it all too keenly. I can smell everything as if my nose was right against it, and it burns like inhaled smoke. Every muscle hurts, my skin hurts, my eyes hurt. It feels as if my body is too sensitive to natural sensations. I need something to dull it all. Please, brothers. I need more of the poppy.”

This was the most Estel had heard Legolas say since the Wood-Elf had woken. It pleased him greatly to hear his lover speaking as would he normally, though of course, the content of his speech was worrisome. Estel did not relish the thought of Legolas’ continued use of the poppy, but he decided, _What the twins made from their herbs must not be as effective as they had hoped. We cannot just ignore Greenleaf’s wishes._ This argument had apparently been going on for some time while Aragorn was asleep, for the twins were wearing down enough to relent to the Elf’s requests, as Estel hoped they would. None of them was willing to let Legolas linger in this torment if they had any means of subduing it, despite the danger of using the poppy for the Prince’s inexplicable pain.

He spoke up on his lover’s behalf, instructing his brothers, “Give it to him. There is no cause for him to continue to suffer.”

The three brothers looked between themselves, and then Aragorn looked to Kalin, expecting the sentry to have some opinion on the matter of his charge, but Kalin only watched Legolas with a despondent grimace. Even as the twins nodded concurrently, having finally given in, Elladan climbed to his feet and warned the Wood-Elf, “Fine, muindor, but you must eat something first. You’ve not eaten in … how long has it been since you’ve eaten? Other than the bit of broth Estel gave you a few hours ago?”

“He ate two apples for breakfast two days ago, and whatever broth we gave him while unconscious, before he no longer swallowed,” the Ranger tattled, adding, “but nothing substantial I know of since the apples.” He expected for Legolas to be angry at his interjection, but the Prince flicked his vividly blue gaze upon Estel’s silver one and the man saw how Legolas felt – the Wood-Elf was filled with gratitude for Estel’s aid in procuring the tincture.

“Yes, then there is no doubt. You must eat first,” Elrohir amended. “And something other than mere broth.”

As if she had been merely waiting for the twins to order such, Reana appeared beside Estel with a cup in hand. From within the tin cup came the tantalizing scent of the last of the rabbit stew she had made for their supper hours ago. It was now the middle of the night, halfway between sunset and sunrise, and the stew was still warm, though not too warm to give the Prince. Now Legolas was truly awake and cognizant, he could eat more than a bit of broth without their fearing him choking or getting sick and then choking – or so Estel hoped. Reana handed Aragorn the cup and spoon along with a hunk of soft, if a bit stale bread.

Again, Legolas turned to Estel and smiled in gratitude, telling the man, “I will eat. I am starving, in fact, so much so my belly hurts,” he admitted. “And whatever that is, it smells delicious.”

He beamed back at his lover. It struck the Adan again how strange all this was. The day before, he and Kalin had dug a grave for the Prince. They had spoken of how they would bury him and what they might tell Thranduil about his son’s death. There had been no hope for Legolas. And now, Legolas lay before him, hungry and thirsty, smiling at the Ranger with anticipation for the food he was to be given. Even though the Silvan was in agony, there was hope, and though this buoyed Aragorn’s mood, it also felt like the calm before the storm, and he found himself worried the Prince’s faer had rejoined his body, woken in this excruciation, and given them all optimism, only for the very real possibility to occur for Legolas still to die in the end due to his strange ailment. But he kept his smile plastered upon his face and refused to show this worry to Legolas.

“Good,” he told the Wood-Elf. He mixed the stew in the cup, seeking out the first bit of meat, for he wanted Legolas to eat most what would nourish him the best, should Legolas be incapable of eating too much, and then held it out to the laegel. “I’m glad you are hungry, meleth nin, because this is too tasty to go to waste,” he teased.

While he spoon-fed his lover in between bites of bread the man broke from the loaf – bites which he placed in the Silvan’s mouth with his fingers – the twins left to sit by the fire, where they worked on making more of the medicines they were giving Legolas in between his doses of the milk of the poppy. Kalin watched Aragorn’s efforts, occasionally interfering to wipe at a crumb or bit of broth running down his Prince’s chin, as it was difficult to feed the Wood-Elf properly while he laid down on the bedroll, and they feared increasing his pain by trying to prop him up to sit. Legolas needed no coaxing to eat. He eagerly chewed and swallowed every bite offered to him, and not once did he balk at being fed like a toddler, though normally, the Prince would not have let anyone feed him as such without being embarrassed at appearing weak.

Kalin kept charge of the waterskin, which he held to his Prince’s mouth when Legolas asked for it, and together, they ensured the young Wood-Elf ate every morsel from the cup and every scrap of bread. By the time they were finished, the twins returned with a steaming cup of brewed herbs. Not needing to explain their intentions, as Legolas trusted the brothers explicitly, the twins added miruvor to the brew and then handed it to Aragorn, who ensured the Prince drank every drop of the liquid. When all this was finished, Legolas laid his head back upon the satchel, closed his eyes, and grunted with contented exhaustion. To the Adan, his lover already looked much better, just from having eaten something substantial.

The tentative sprout of hope he felt began to grow new tendrils, which wound their way further into his mind and heart, causing the Ranger to consider, _With time, surely this pain will pass. He wants to eat and drink. He only asked for death because of how much he suffers. He will get better,_ the man tried to convince himself, repeating, _He will get better._

Since the twins were pacified by Legolas having eaten and drank enough to sustain him, Elladan grudgingly passed Aragorn the phial of poppy milk while telling him, “Give him about a third of what is left. It will help him to sleep properly.”

At hearing this, Aragorn looked up quickly, his gaze sharp at hearing his brothers’ intent to put the Prince into sleep. The twins must’ve decided the Elf was out of danger of falling into insentience and not awakening, else they would not have suggested drugging Legolas into reverie. Also, they likely believed Legolas would benefit from sleep, with perhaps his body’s unnatural sensitivity calming with rest. Aragorn acknowledged this to be a good idea, though it still worried him Legolas might fall into slumber and not waken. Neither of his brothers responded to his anxious gaze, but both did nod at him in encouragement. Thus, he doled out the appropriate dosage with Kalin helping to lift his Prince’s head so he could drink it easily without spilling a single drop of the dear liquid.

“Thank you, brothers,” the Wood-Elf Prince whispered so softly Estel did not hear him, but knew what he said only because he happened to be looking at the Prince and so was able to read his lips.

The thus far silent sentry now broke his reticent watchfulness. He adjusted the blanket overtop his Prince and whispered back to Legolas in the soothing tones one might use with a restless child, “Sleep, my Prince. Do not fret. I will keep watch over you. We all will.”

His belly full, his pain soon to be alleviated, and his friends around him, Legolas smiled in gratification. The Eldar and Ranger quietly remained assembled around the Prince, the three brothers occasionally sharing joyous smiles between them, though Kalin continued to be somber and mute. After a while, the laegel’s ostensible relief from his constant pain became a relief to them all, for when Legolas fell into slumber, his shuddering, whimpering, and twitching stopped entirely to allow him a deep rest, and in tandem, everyone else relaxed to have their beloved friend sleeping peacefully. Reana, who had been about the business of keeping watch over her Lords and his friends, came over to check up on them, though she said nothing. Instead, she stood behind Kalin, laid her hands upon his shoulders, and gently began to massage the tension out of the sentry’s neck.

Elladan sighed, held out his hand, and took back the forgotten phial of poppy milk from Aragorn. Holding the phial up to allow the scant light to shine upon it, showing them all how little was left, Elladan complained, “We only have this one phial and it is now nearly empty. If his pain doesn’t lessen, I’m not sure what we will do.”

“Perhaps we could go back to the village? Liandra may have some she would be willing to part with,” Reana suggested as she milled the muscles of Kalin’s neck, an act earning her much appreciation from Kalin, whose eyes were half-lidded and whose discontented grimace was at last absent from his face. “Besides which, in the village, the Prince could sleep in an actual bed. He would be more comfortable.”

They thought on this for a moment until Kalin nixed this idea, patting his lover’s hand upon his shoulder and suggesting, “No, not now our numbers are reduced. Perhaps if the other Rangers were with us, or at least Wendt. I fear some of the villagers might not be persuaded by Liandra’s attempts to downplay our role in their fellow villagers’ deaths. Besides, if we bring Legolas to the village while he seems sick, it may only foment their belief he is bringing Elise’s ‘sickness’ back to them, and cause them to react as they did at the farm. I would not risk my Prince’s life on it.”

This was a highly valid point, one with which they all agreed, now Kalin put it to them in this way. Wistfully, Elrohir shook his head. He began picking at the flattened grass around him, pulling it free from the ground and tossing it to the side in churlishness. He wished, “If only Ada were here. He would have some idea of what ailed Greenleaf, or he could just end Legolas’ pain with vilya. Or lacking Ada, I wish we could get Greenleaf home to the valley quickly.”

“If we travelled now,” Kalin thought aloud in response, refuting this, as well, though it had not truly been Elrohir’s intent to suggest they leave soon, “I think my Prince would die from the pain of doing so. He cannot even stand to be touched. He cannot survive a ride to Imladris.”

“Yes, you’re right, of course,” the younger twin conceded unhappily. Pulling free a whole clump of the withered remnants of the dormant winter grass, he shook the dirt from its stems, began pulling each leaf free of the tangle of its root ball, and then cast them one by one to the side. “I suppose we have little choice except to wait until Legolas is better before we leave.”

“If he gets better at all.” The three brothers all looked at Kalin with varying degrees of hostility and annoyance for his pessimistic statement, though Kalin seemed not to notice any of them. “I cannot stand to see my Prince in this pain. If his condition does not improve,” the sentry began, but then looked up at his raptly listening audience, and did not finish his statement.

_If Greenleaf continues to suffer, I think Kalin might truly kill his Prince to end his pain,_ the Ranger suddenly believed wholeheartedly. He had entertained the thought earlier but now saw this was not some mere worry, but a true threat to his lover’s life. And should he continue to be in agony, Legolas would gladly ask of it from Kalin. When Estel looked to his brothers, both twins were regarding Kalin with suspicion and fear, apparently thinking the same as was Estel. _At least I will not be alone in trying to keep Kalin from killing his Prince to aid him,_ the Ranger told himself, his own thought causing a fearsome shiver to run down his spine. Never would he have thought to fear for Legolas’ life with Kalin around – not until now.

After giving her lover’s shoulders a final squeeze, Reana walked out from behind Kalin and began away to tend to the dying fire. As he watched her go, Kalin continued to speak as if thinking aloud, saying quietly, “It’s just as well you have only the one phial of poppy medicines. If Legolas took too much of it, it would lose its efficacy anyway, right?”

Elladan eyed the sentry from where he sat, gauging the reason for Kalin’s question, and wondering how best to answer to keep the Silvan from losing hope for his Prince recovery, for if Kalin thought Legolas would only live to suffer and the poppy would run out or cease working, then the devoted guard would do what was best for his Prince, even if it meant ending his life. After looking to his twin for confirmation of his qualms, Elladan sighed and replied, “Yes, that is true. And if taken for too long, the body grows dependent upon it, which can be even worse for the patient involved. But we do not have enough for either to happen. It will run out long before it ceases aiding him or he becomes dependent upon it.”

“Then we remain here at the lake,” the guard determined firmly, his previously relaxed shoulders tensing up again with the burden of his Prince’s welfare set squarely upon them. “For now.”

Something new occurred to Estel, something he had not had cause to consider before. As he watched Elrohir continue to tear up the grass in agitated fretfulness and Elladan rub at his chin as the elder Noldo contemplated Kalin’s declaration, Aragorn came to understand, _In the end, Kalin will assume responsibility for Greenleaf. It is his duty, his calling,_ he told himself. This in itself was not a new comprehension, though the circumstances were different from any in which the Ranger had ever found himself and the Prince. Usually, he admired Kalin for his stalwartness in protecting his Prince. In anger and belittlement, Thranduil often claimed Kalin was Legolas’ keeper, and when younger, this had been a relatively accurate description. Now his Prince was older, Kalin was no less his charge’s keeper, though it had always been in the role of aiding his Prince or safeguarding him. Now, Kalin was cast into the role of making decisions for his Prince on his King’s behalf, and thus doing for Legolas what Thranduil would want done, should the worst come to pass and Legolas become incapable of making said decisions for himself. This made the Ranger wonder, _If Thranduil were here, and Legolas suffering as he is with no hope of recovery, would the Elvenking kill his son to spare him this tormentous ordeal?_

Estel thought the King would do so in a heartbeat. As for Kalin, he would do it, as well, just as his King would want him to do, as Legolas would want for him to do. What Estel had never before considered was this, _We are displaced. Always, Kalin has deferred to the twins, our father, or myself in the healing and care of Legolas, as we are trained to do so, but as Greenleaf suffers from no injury, and thus we are useless to cure him, Kalin will be the one to assume this obligation. I fear he will choose differently than would my brothers or I. We would try to make Legolas comfortable and hope for him to heal, but Kalin might do as his Prince asks and end Greenleaf’s life to halt his agony._

Again, a shudder trailed down Aragorn’s back, causing his whole body to quake at the morbid and rancid thought of Kalin killing Legolas in an act of mercy. Likewise, the equally gruesome idea occurred to him, _How much pain is Greenleaf willing to endure before he desires death so greatly he releases his faer from rhaw? He need not have a weapon to end his own life,_ the man reminded himself, _nor have Kalin do it for him. He need only decide to die and his soul will move on to the Halls of Awaiting._ Aragorn did not typically carry the milk of the poppy with him while travelling, but he suddenly wished he had, for then, they would have more to dose the laegel, which might extend the amount of time Legolas’ pain could be dulled, and thus extend the amount of time possible for him to recuperate.

To have his lover’s faer return, only for the Elf to release it willingly, would be a heartbreaking situation – one through which Estel could not imagine himself living.

For a while, no one spoke, and each was lost in his own thoughts, until as the twins considered what Legolas earlier told them, they began to speak between themselves of it. Aragorn and Kalin listened avidly to the two adept healers’ conversation. Elladan rubbed at his well-made and hairless chin some more as he conjectured to his twin, “I think Greenleaf had the right of it. He said as a haunt, with his faer disconnected from his rhaw, he felt nothing – no sensation of any kind – while being unable to smell or such. Even in so short an amount of time, his severance with the corporeal world ought to have been permanent – ”

“ – such that now he is back in his body, his rhaw is overwhelmed with the corporeal sensations he did not experience while cut off from his body, yes,” the younger twin finished and agreed. Wiping the grass and dirt from his hands onto his trouser legs, Elrohir then began picking at the dirt under his nails. The Noldorin Elf seemed restless and fidgety to Estel.

Elladan, who was ever more composed than his younger brother, took out his dagger and handed it to Elrohir without being asked. As Elrohir began cleaning the soil from under his nails with the dagger’s sharp end, Elladan began, “I doubt it is even truly pain he feels. Not that he isn’t in agony, I mean, it’s just that – ”

“ – it isn’t pain in the sense of injury, but in the sense of it all being too much for him. Too much for his mind and body to handle right now.” The younger twin winced as he dug too deeply under his nail and gouged himself, though he did not stop his task. “I wish Glorfindel were here. He may have experienced something similar. And if not – ”

“ – he may have some knowledge of someone else in the same situation, having actually lived in Valinor where others were re-embodied, yes,” the elder finished for his  younger as he accepted his dagger back and replaced it upon his belt, now Elrohir was done.

When the Ranger was a child, he had always been highly amused when his foster brothers spoke in this way. He had always been more fascinated by how Elrohir and Elladan were alike in mind rather than in the mere identicalness of their bodies. He was no less fascinated now, as it were, but this was because of what they said rather than how they said it, for after so many years, Aragorn was accustomed to his brothers speaking as if they were one person.

_I must be dreaming,_ the Ranger wondered when the twins grew silent in ponderance of their discussion. Legolas was alive and unharmed; Estel was alive and unharmed. No one of his own people had died or been injured. Had not the villagers attacked them, there would have been no deaths at all caused by any of his companions, but he disregarded those deaths, for in his mind, the menfolk had brought their deaths upon themselves for attacking Estel, his friends, and his brothers. To have Legolas living seemed to Aragorn as unreal as had Legolas’ imminent death seemed unreal to him. He was not entirely sure whether to believe it. _Perhaps I am dead, instead, and all this is a fictive imagining to appease my dying faer,_ he joked darkly.

Estel was still exhausted, having only slept a couple of hours, and  he might have gone back to sleep, but one look at Kalin’s morose, contemplative staring at his Prince ended all of the man’s desire for rest. He would never have considered before tonight whether his lover’s life would be safe in Kalin’s care, but right now, he was unwilling to take the chance. Aragorn rubbed at his aching head and prepared himself for watching over Legolas the rest of the night.

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He awoke with when the sun started to illuminate the mantle of sky over the Misty Mountains in the eastern distance. This time, Legolas opened his eyes instinctively, and though it was plentiful bright around him, his head did not feel as if it would burst from the blinding brilliance. Although late autumn and nearing winter, and though cold, the day was already beautiful, with the natural sounds of the woods and the gentle lapping of the lake against its shore adding to the tranquility of their campsite.

“Greenleaf,” he heard Estel whisper beside him from where the Ranger sat.

The Elf turned his head to look at his human lover. Aragorn was peering down at him, love and affection on his bearded face, and joy to see Legolas’ eyes open yet again. He grinned right back at the Ranger, saying, “Estel.”

From slightly farther away, Kalin was speaking to Reana about something, which immediately drew Legolas’ attention when he heard his sentry tell the she-Elf, “It may no longer be needed, I suppose, but who is to say? Only Ilúvatar knows what will come of it.”

Having still been looking at Estel, he saw how the man’s devoted smile began to waver, for the Adan realized Legolas was now hearing a conversation he would rather the Wood-Elf not hear – or so it seemed to Legolas. He watched Aragorn force himself into retaining his smile for the laegel, but when Reana and Kalin began walking closer, he looked at them with a fierce scowl, as if trying to warn them to quiet. Either the two Elves did not see Estel or did not care to keep their topic from Legolas, for they continued.

“It has been dug once. If needed, it can quickly be dug out again,” Reana was arguing back to Kalin. “Besides, some poor animal may fall into it.”

And then, his sentry and the Noldorin Elleth were standing at Legolas’ feet, both of them looking down at him and both looking very surprised to see him awake with his eyes open. “My Prince,” his sentry said breathlessly, though he had no call to be out of breath. At once, Kalin walked to the other side of where Aragorn sat and knelt down beside his charge. He smiled faintly, asking, “How do you feel this morning?”

Wanting to know of what they were speaking that would elicit such a reaction from Aragorn, Legolas ignored the elder Silvan’s question and inquired, his voice hoarse as he said, “Some poor animal may fall into what?”

Kalin looked to Aragorn and Reana in turn, seeking some way out of answering, it appeared, but he did not shirk the question and told his Prince, “Your grave.”

He wondered, _They already dug my grave?_

The two Elves and Ranger could see the heartbrokenness upon the Prince’s face. Carefully, Estel placed a hand upon the laegel’s shoulder, but quickly removed it when he realized he was touching the Wood-Elf and might be causing him pain. The man explained, “Kalin and I dug your grave yesterday morning. We thought it best to be prepared, Greenleaf. Honestly, we thought there was no hope for you. I’m sorry, meleth nin. It wasn’t that we gave up; it was that we were trying to be practical.”

He couldn’t blame them, of course, even if it did hurt him to hear. The Wood-Elf closed his eyes to blink back the tears of despair welling within them; these tears were not for him, but for his friends, who had been suffering themselves in having to deal with his unconsciousness and what they had rightly assumed would be his imminent death. Realizing he was only giving them further cause to worry by avoiding looking at them, the Silvan shifted how he lay, trying in vain to stretch out his cramped muscles, and told his audience, “I understand. It was practical. But there is no need for it anymore. Fill it in, as Reana says,” he told his sentry firmly, “lest some animal becomes trapped in it. I’ve no need for a grave any longer.”

At his declaration, both Kalin and Estel beamed widely at him, for he had just assured them he had all intentions of living – or at least, he would not willingly die. “We will do so at once,” the elder Silvan agreed with his Prince, looking happier than the Wood-Elf had seen him since first greeting him in the road of the village days ago, when Kalin had realized his Prince was in the human settlement, to his surprise.

With Reana trailing behind, Kalin grabbed a shovel – Wendt’s shovel, the laegel recognized – and took off, the two lovers walking nearly shoulder to shoulder on their way to wherever they had dug the Silvan’s grave. Morbid curiosity made the Prince speculate where they had decided to lay him down for his final resting place. He had no doubt Kalin had chosen the best possible place for it.

His wavy, chestnut hair falling into his face as he leant over the prone Prince, the Ranger asked of him, “We are staying here at the lake until you recover enough to ride. Is that fine with you?”

He merely nodded, for the twins were soon standing in the spot Kalin had just vacated, and the younger twin interrupted by exclaiming happily, “Muindor! You’re awake.”

Elrohir soon received a lighthearted smack to the back of the head for his loudness. “Quiet,” Elladan chastised his twin and knelt down with him to be by the Prince. “You’ll hurt his ears.”

To the three brothers’ relieved amusement, Legolas laughed. It was not the hearty, full-throated laugh the laegel usually gave them when amused by the twins’ antics, but it was the most joy they had seen from the Prince since his awakening. “I feel better,” he told them before they could ask. “Everything… it isn’t…” the laegel searched for a way to explain until finally deciding upon saying, “It isn’t as intense as it was. It isn’t as unbearable.”

And it wasn’t because his senses were dulled with poppy, either, for his last dose had surely worn off by now, which to Legolas showed he was indeed getting better. In fact, he no longer felt like death was the only means to end his suffering. The twins and Ranger understood this, as well, and no happier could they have looked, in Legolas’ thinking. It soothed his fraught faer and weakened rhaw to have these three around him at this moment – more so than could have any poppy or other herbs.

His belly chose that moment to rumble, breaking their pleased, amicable silence, and causing Elladan to tell the Prince, “You need food. Fresh food.”

“You’ll stay here with Greenleaf, wont’ you?” the younger twin asked, his question silly since there was no way Aragorn would leave the laegel to his own devices just now, which Legolas knew as well as did the twins.

Estel must have thought the same about this inane question, for he shook his head with a snort of disbelief. “Of course I will. Go; find us something good to eat, brothers, before I end up eating my shoe. The jerky is starting to taste like leather, anyway.”

The twins and Wood-Elf chuckled at the Ranger’s mild complaint, ere Elrohir and Elladan stood, with the former saying, “Then we are off to find greens of some sort. Some burdock or chickweed or plantain. Perhaps some nuts, if the squirrels haven’t hidden them all.”

“And some fresh meat,” the elder twin corrected, ribbing his twin with his elbow, their serious demeanor of last night now gone, and both looking younger with their joviality to hear the laegel felt better now he had rested. “Legolas is a growing boy! He needs it.”

Again, Legolas laughed at his friends’ puerile banter, which earned him identically loving smiles from the two Noldor. He listened as the twins grabbed their bows and took off, the noise of their departure not nearly as deafening as noises had been to him before his slumber. Beside him, Aragorn shifted, his gaze ever upon the Wood-Elf. When Legolas began trying to adjust how he laid, for the ground under him was causing parts of his body to go numb from having lain still for so long, Estel’s hand shot out to be of aid, ere it rapidly pulled back, the man giving the laegel a grimace of apology.

_It hurts him to watch me hurt,_ the Wood-Elf lamented. Aragorn was distressed to be unable to aid Legolas, the Prince could tell, but moreover, through the connection of their disparate faers, Legolas could feel his lover suffering right along with the Elf. He grunted when he twisted his back and stretched the idle muscles there too far too fast.

When for the fourth time Estel reached out for Legolas, only to pull his hand back hurriedly ere he touched the Wood-Elf, the Silvan took pity upon his lover. Truly, he desired to touch Aragorn, as well. While his pain was much lessened, it was not gone, and though it no longer consumed his every thought and mounted with his every breath, he knew it would hurt him immensely if he allowed for Estel to do as Legolas wished for most – for the Ranger to lie beside him and hold him from behind, his beard at the nape of the Elf’s neck, and his arms wound tightly around the laegel’s middle. Still, he could offer Aragorn some comfort while deriving from the man comfort of his own. And so, the laegel initiated the contact they both desired. He gingerly reached out and took Aragorn’s hand in his own. The man did not pull away but nor did he grab Legolas’ digits in his own, but allowed the Elf to do as he pleased.

After a few moments, though, Aragorn turned away from looking at their joined hands and to the Prince, which was when Legolas saw the tears trailing unbidden down the man’s whiskered, smiling face. As had Estel often before thought of the Prince during these last few months, Legolas thought now of Aragorn, _I have never seen Estel weep as much as this last half year._ Knowing he was the cause of the man’s upset did not do much to bolster his mood this morning.

The Ranger took a deep breath and began, “Greenleaf. I feared – ”

Not wanting to dwell on any dire matters just now, Legolas interrupted, “Estel. Please.”

At once, Aragorn quieted to listen. When the Silvan said nothing further, though, the Ranger leant down and lightly pressed his forehead to the Elf’s forehead, eliciting a sigh from each of them at this simple contact. “I love you, Greenleaf,” the man susurrated softly.

“I love you, Estel,” he replied fervently. The slight contact with the man’s forehead to his was painful, but not nearly as painful as it would have been hours earlier, giving the laegel hope that with enough time, this strange ailment would be ameliorated.

The human sat back up and grinned at the Silvan, each of them happy to be alive, relatively well, and in each other’s presence. Eventually, though, a particular ache in the Elf’s lower belly made him tell the human, “Estel, now the others are gone, I have a favor to ask of you.”

Worriedly, Aragorn nodded his agreement ere he had even heard the favor, though he appeared nervous for what Legolas might ask. “Anything, meleth nin. What do you need?”

“I need to piss,” he told the human.

Aragorn outright cackled, his relief at the innocent content of this request making it all the funnier to the Adan. However, the human’s laughter faded when he realized the conundrum of seeing to this task when the Elf was in discomfort at the slightest movement. He watched as Estel looked around him, seeking an answer as to what to do.

Thinking the man might suggest he piss in a pot or something else unsavory, Legolas told his lover, “Help me to stand. The nearest tree will suffice.”

Although not thrilled with this suggestion, Aragorn was more than willing to aid the Elf in seeing to this if it meant Legolas was willing to try to get up and move around, and so he nodded. But when the Ranger tried to slide his arms under the Elf to help him to sit up, Legolas groaned and shook his head. “Let me do it on my own.”

Again, although displeased by this, Estel did not argue, and Legolas gingerly, slowly, and painfully rolled to his side, where he placed an arm under him to push himself upright. He teetered a bit, Estel’s hands out to catch him but refraining from interfering, and then managed to sit on his own. After having lain down nearly motionless for hours now, save for when he’d been unconscious and riding in front of Kalin on Arato to get here, the Elf’s muscles were weak from disuse. He would not let this dissuade him, though, and while he waited a moment for his dizzy head to regain its lucidity, he did not fall over, to his delight. Like an Elfling just learning to move about, Legolas pulled his legs under him, rolled onto his hands and knees, and then pushed himself into sitting upon his heels, where he once more stopped to allow his body to readjust to this. All the while, Estel observed as if he were a worried mother watching her toddler attempt to take his first steps, and Legolas tried not to let this upset him. He needed the watching, after all, and knew it well.

But once upon his knees, he found he could not gather the strength to stand, and so elicited this much help from Aragorn, who was glad to do it when Legolas asked, “Pull me to my feet, please.”

Careful as Aragorn was in this, Legolas nearly cried out when the man did as asked, with the feeling of his arms being pulled from their sockets creating sharp agony, and his truly wounded ribs protesting this, as well. Before he knew it, though, he was on his feet for the first time in about a day and a half. Aragorn did not let go of the Wood-Elf, even after he was standing, as Legolas wobbled in his stance. He looked up from the ground to Estel, who was grinning widely to see his lover standing. He could not help but to return this grin, as he was just as pleased to be even this mobile, at least. With Aragorn’s aid, Legolas hobbled a short distance away, his feet sliding through the noisy leaves under his boots rather lifting and sitting down as would they normally while walking, until they reached a tree close to where Arato stood, watching all this with his obsidian eyes. The stallion tossed his head and nickered, then bared his teeth, giving him the appearance of smiling at his Silvan master.

Legolas placed both hands upon the trunk before him and considered, _Now what? If I let go of this tree, I will fall over. I cannot even unlace my trousers._

Aragorn offered, “Do you want me to hold you upright by the waist while you take care of the rest, or do you want to hold onto the tree while I aid you?”

The Wood-Elf snickered; he then laughed, which was contagious, as Aragorn soon laughed along with him. “Go on then,” he told the human, his hands firmly upon the trunk. “If I let go of this tree, I am bound to fall over.”

Already as intimate as two people could be, neither felt any embarrassment when Aragorn deftly unlaced the Elf’s trousers, pulled free his flaccid shaft, and held it out from the Prince’s body, aiming away from his boots, and doing so until Legolas was finished relieving his bladder. All the while, Legolas groaned softly, though not in pain, but in the simple pleasure of taking care of this bodily need. And when done, Estel tucked the Prince’s shaft back within his trousers, laced him back up, and then teased at the length of time it had taken the Elf to answer nature’s call, “One would think you hadn’t pissed for days.”

Laughing again, and delighted beyond measure to be alive, no longer as debilitated by pain, and most importantly, to be here with Estel, the Wood-Elf rejoindered, “Perhaps that’s because I haven’t, Master Human.” When he had caught his breath, Legolas suggested, “Let me try to walk back on my own.”

Not liking this but once more not arguing against the proud Prince, Aragorn nodded. He kept his hands ever out to catch the Wood-Elf but allowed Legolas to shuffle back to the bedroll on his own. Once there, Legolas stopped and pondered whether he actually desired to lie back down on the bedroll. He’d been lying down for hours; he did not want to do so again. His back would only hurt worse if he did. Sensing his lover’s conflicted reflection on the matter, Estel quipped, “Since you’ve come back from the dead, I suppose I can allow you to sit in my seat, if you wish.”

Both human and Elf chuckled. It felt so wonderful to be laughing. He had thought to die from Elise’s curse. He had thought Estel would die from Elise’s curse. Likewise, after the last several hours of enervating, intolerable pain, Legolas had thought he would rather die than live in such a state. Now the pain had abated even the smallest bit, the Prince’s mood was lighthearted and cheerful. He agreed with a nod and let Aragorn ease him into the natural depression in the roots under the oak tree, the very one Estel had claimed as his chair during their weeks camping here, but not before the man quickly moved the bedroll to the spot so the ground would be soft for the laegel. Glad to be seated, as his strength was now gone, Legolas reclined back against the trunk of the oak, settling firmly into the spot, and let his tired, aching muscles relax now his task was completed.

It had taken more strength and concentration to find a tree and piss than he would have thought possible, but he told himself, _At least I didn’t have to piss in a pot._

Soon, Aragorn was seated in afore him, his hands fisted in his lap. The human was fighting not to reach out to touch the laegel, Legolas knew. However, the Prince didn’t care if it hurt him – he wanted his lover near. He held his arms out in invitation. Estel leapt to his knees and scrambled forward but hesitated before making contact.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he told the Elf.

“It will hurt me more for you to stay away,” the Elf replied.

With that, Aragorn’s choice was made. He slid beside where the laegel sat, aiding Legolas to shift forward until Estel was the one sitting with his back against the tree and the Elf sat before him, his back against Estel’s front, and the Prince’s rear wedged between his spread legs. It pained Legolas to move in doing this, but once he was firm against his Ranger and he could relax into his lover’s embrace, the pain ebbed until it was only as bad as a few moments before but no worse. He sighed and laid his head against the man’s chest. When he noted Aragorn kept his arms at his sides, Legolas seized them and pulled them around his middle, such that he was now tethered by all of Estel’s long, strong limbs.

He had thought never again to feel the pleasure of his lover’s nearness, of Estel’s touch, to smell the piquant, familiar scent of the man, to hear his soft breathing or feel his strong heartbeat against his own flesh, to revel in the scratchiness of his whiskers, to have Aragorn’s calloused hands upon his skin, or to share the man’s warmth. And now, he had all these again, and he cared not a whit if it hurt. Having his lover near superseded any pain it might cause him.

They sat in companionable, relieved silence while the sun steadily rose in the sky. Likely, the human was meant to be keeping watch, but behind Legolas, the Ranger had fallen asleep. The reprieve of having Legolas’ form aligned with his own, the two of them touching in the easy comity of lovers, and with the Prince’s earlier declaration of feeling better and intending to fight through this ailment, had sapped all the man’s fear-borne resolve to stay awake. The Prince did not care. His skin hurt, his eyes hurt, and his muscles hurt, but none of this was unendurable; in fact, being held by Estel made it all the more bearable for Legolas.

When Kalin and Reana returned a short while later, it was to find the Prince awake in his lover’s arms with tears streaming down his face. He had not the strength to wipe them away, nor the desire, as they were tears of sheer relief and joy rather than of pain or sorrow. Not knowing why his Prince wept, though, the sentry rushed to Legolas to find out the cause for his charge’s state.

“Legolas?” the guard whispered as he fell to his knees before the younger Silvan, though he tried not to wake the human nor upset the laegel, who despite his weeping, had his eyes closed against the bright morning light.

At once, the younger Silvan opened his eyes, squinted against Anor’s illumination, and settled them upon his sentry. Kalin was smudged with soil, a particularly long streak of what amounted to grave dirt – from the laegel’s own intended grave, no less – trailing from the elder Silvan’s left temple, down his cheek, and to the underside of his jaw, as if he had wiped at his face and left this smear behind in doing so. The elder Wood-Elf’s hands flitted uselessly before his Prince, seeking to touch Legolas, as would he normally in trying to ascertain if his Prince were well, but stopping before touching the laegel. He tried to smile at his sentry, seeking to appease his devoted servant’s unhidden discomposure to find his charge weeping while in Aragorn’s arms, sitting upright, and thus not how he had left the younger Silvan.

“I am fine,” he whispered back in turn, speaking low for the same reason – not to wake Estel. “All is well,” he assured Kalin, who did not believe his Prince in the least, what with Legolas’ weeping continuing unabated.

Reana came up behind Kalin, the shovel in hand, but she appeared much less filthy than did Kalin, who must have done most of the actual work in filling in the now to be unused grave. The sentry looked back at his Elleth lover and then to his Prince, confusion and concern mixed with his helpless but strong desire to touch his charge making the elder Silvan once more agitatedly flit his hands before the Prince. Kalin asked in rapid succession, giving Legolas little chance to answer any one question before he began another, “What is wrong, my Prince? Why do you weep? Are you in pain? Do you need to move away from Estel?”

The she-Elf knelt beside Kalin, tossing the shovel to the side as she sought to be of aid, also, and both stalwart Elves looked ready to remove him from Estel’s embrace, as if they thought the Adan were hurting him. In fact, both appeared rather peeved at Aragorn, perchance angered that the man was somehow responsible for Legolas’ weeping. This was true in a way, but only because Legolas was so overjoyed to be in his lover’s arms, with Estel alive and well, and himself alive and well enough to be with the man. He tried again to appease his sentry, “I am fine,” he replied, giving up on answering his sentry’s many questions but instead assuring the elder Silvan, “Becalm yourself, my friend. I am merely tired and sore. Estel helped me to relieve myself a short while ago, and then we sat down here, where Estel fell asleep.”

Kalin finally settled on gently laying a hand upon his Prince’s knee, his touch so light the younger Elf barely felt it, as he asked, “But why do you weep?”

His smile for his sentry grew. “Because I am happy. Because all of you are healthy and alive, Elise is gone, and the pain I felt before is lessened. Because Estel is well and with me.”

This finally explained to Kalin why his Prince wept, for truly, Legolas was happy, and the sentry’s tension fell away with this comprehension. He sighed heavily and smiled back at his Prince. Bemused, Reana shook her head at the two Wood-Elves before she laid a hand upon Kalin’s shoulder, telling him, “Come, let us build up the fire and boil some water for tea, and leave these two to rest. Lords Elladan and Elrohir will surely return soon with fresh food for the noon meal. Let us be ready for their return.”

Kalin nodded at Reana and stood. With a final glance down to his charge, he followed the Noldo to the dying fire. They spoke quietly amongst themselves as they worked while waiting for the twins to return. Now that someone else was here to keep watch, Legolas allowed his eyes to close again, settled more comfortably against his lover, and let his consciousness fall away, not once fearing now as he had before over the last few days that he might not wake from it.


	52. Chapter 52

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said to some of you in the comments, Legolas' life isn't safe just yet. And don't hate me, mmkay? Nothing gold can stay, eh? It might be a few weeks before I get the next chapter up. But I will get it up as soon as is feasible. 
> 
> Enjoy reading. Thanks!

A full week of days passed.

The twins, sentry, and Elleth kept a steady routine for Legolas. Each morning, the Prince was fed something light but filling, given a dash of miruvor mixed with a steadily decreasing dose of the milk of the poppy, and then the Ranger would aid the Wood-Elf in taking care of his bodily needs. Once this was done, Aragorn aided Legolas in washing his face and hands, stayed close at hand while the Prince walked about as much as he was able before the pain and exhaustion prevented him from continuing, and afterwards, the Wood-Elf would sleep for a while longer. Around midday, if the Prince had not woken on his own, he would be awoken to eat the noon meal, when the twins would ply Legolas with their herbal brew, which did much the same as the poppy except with less effectiveness. But as the days went on, the laegel’s pain decreased, and he needed the tonics given to him less and less – much to everyone’s delight.

Again, after the noon meal, one or both of the twins would help the laegel in exercising, either by walking him around or aiding him in minor tasks such as having the Wood-Elf help to dress their kills from hunting or prepare their catches from fishing, aid him in cleaning up from those messy jobs, and once done, they would force Legolas into resting some more, though this usually ended up with the Prince sitting in Estel’s self-proclaimed chair, where one, two, or all of the others would gather around and they would share stories of old, play stones on a makeshift board drawn into the dust and using acorns and rocks as pieces, or Legolas would enjoy a task which was Aragorn’s favorite – he would sit behind the Silvan and Legolas sit before him, and the two would share their afternoon speaking of anything or nothing at all, but merely enjoying the other’s proximity.

Right before the evening meal, Legolas would sleep for a short while as the others cooked or did other chores such as caring for their horses. When their meal was ready, someone would wake Legolas if he had fallen into reverie, they would eat, the twins would ply the Wood-Elf with a little more miruvor and poppy tincture, and then Aragorn would once more aid the Silvan in washing up, help him to brush and braid his hair, and any other small tasks to fill the bored Prince’s time. And bored he was. Being under constant surveillance and remaining in lingering pain kept Legolas from doing anything too strenuous, which also kept him from doing much of anything at all, by his reckoning.

Furthermore, by Legolas’ admission to his friends, each day he suffered a little less from the agonizing oversensitivity of his senses. The smallest of sounds were no longer thunderous to him, the slightest of smells no longer gave him agonizing headaches, the overcast light of the late autumn’s sun no longer caused him to keep his eyes closed constantly or to squint against the illumination, and the Elf no longer avoided everyone’s touch as he had before, though they still took care not to handle him any more than was necessary. When they did touch the Prince, his friends were sure to be as gentle as possible. To Aragorn’s unending pleasure, his lover’s body was returning to normal. Aragorn still found it extremely difficult not to handle Legolas constantly, as he sought reassurance for himself of the Elf’s well-being and to reassure Legolas of his love and devotion, but as each day Legolas’ agony diminished, Estel was able to touch the Prince more, with Legolas growing more willing to endure any discomfort in his eagerness to find affection with his friends, and most especially the Ranger.

With a whole week gone, Aragorn was no less anxious that this was somehow all a dream and he soon to wake from it to find his lover dead and buried, or that he was dead and buried, instead. Since the day he and Legolas were accosted along a trade route in the Mirkwood forest near Lake-town, Aragorn had been afflicted with nightmares. Since that day and because of the awful events occurring afterwards, Aragorn occasionally dreamt of Cort and Sven and what they had done to the laegel, of not being able to get free of his rope bindings to save the Elf in time; he dreamt of the harrowing story Legolas had told him of what transpired in Lake-town in the back of Kane’s wine shop, for though he hadn’t been there, the Prince’s description provided Aragorn enough details for his traitorous imagination to fill in the rest; he dreamt of being in Mirkwood, with Legolas to face his attacker and make his apologies, and of what had happened to the Prince that night in his father’s halls with Kane; he dreamt of running along the corridors of the Elvenking’s stronghold, of seeking his lover, only to find him in a pool of his own blood, the flesh of his thigh hewn nearly from the bone; he dreamt of how he had forced Legolas into facing his grief and then left him with his father in Eryn Galen, sure the Wood-Elf would die of sorrow without him there to succor the Prince; he dreamt of the secondhand account Legolas had told him of how the Wood-Elf had been tricked and tortured by Mithfindl, of what the foul Noldo had done and said under the guise of being Estel; he dreamt of how the Silvan Elf had looked when they found him in the pleasance after being beaten nearly to death and raped viciously by Mithfindl; he dreamt of searching the forest around Imladris for the Prince, who had left to hunt Mithfindl while grieving and injured; he dreamt of when they had finally been found by the Noldo, of Mithfindl molesting Legolas, teasing the Ranger with his hands upon the Silvan and the Silvan’s life literally in Mithfindl’s hands; and with recent events added to his nightmares, he now also dreamt of Elise, of her touching him and Legolas, of how she might take the Prince from him still, though as far as he knew, he and Legolas were safe from the haunt’s imprecation.

It was from one of these dreams Aragorn awoke this night. In this dream, he was running in the woods, searching for the Woodland Prince. He wasn’t entirely sure who was tormenting Legolas, but the Ranger knew if he didn’t find the Elf, Legolas would die horribly. He was alone in his efforts, the woods were abandoned of all wildlife and the trees and grass around him were utterly dead, there was no moon and no stars visible in the black, cloudless sky, and he could hear Legolas screaming in agony somewhere up ahead – always up ahead, for no matter how fast or far he ran, Aragorn could never gain enough ground to get close to where the Prince was shrieking in abject suffering. Most distressing for the Ranger was how Legolas screamed for Estel, pleading for the man to come to him, to aid him, but no matter how loudly the human shouted back to the Prince, asking where he was and what was wrong, Legolas never answered except with more shrieks and calls for Estel to help him.

His eyes snapped open. Aragorn awoke with his heart pounding, his chest heaving, and fear coursing through his veins. Although the night was chilly, even with the blankets upon the Prince and he, sweat ran down the man’s back and forehead. He realized he was awake and it had all been a dream, but Legolas’ shrieks reverberated in his ears. Before him, the very Elf whom he had sought in his nightmare laid in peaceful slumber. A hand upon his upper back startled him, causing him to jump slightly.

“Estel? Are you well?” came Kalin’s voice from behind him.

Not wanting to roll over and away from Legolas, which would surely wake the sleeping Prince, Estel calmed his breathing, closed his eyes, and tried to still his rampant heart. He waited until he was certain his voice would not give away his terror before he whispered to the sentry, “Yes. I am fine. It was only a nightmare,” he explained, and then he said again, more to convince himself this time, “It was only a nightmare.”

The elder Wood-Elf gave some noncommittal grunt in response. He walked around his sleeping Prince to stand on the other side so he could look at Estel where the man lay, and then told the Ranger when Estel opened his eyes to return the worried Elf’s gaze, “I have them, as well. I dream of battles and skirmishes I have lived through while others of my kith have fallen, and of losing my sister, even though I was not there to see it happen. I dream of losing my parents, which I was also not there to see, but have no trouble imagining, it seems. But mostly, I have nightmares of watching my Prince falling to some spider’s bite or being cut down by an Orc, or of his being hurt by someone as he has before, and always in my nightmares, I am unable to stop it happening.”

Aragorn again closed his eyes and stuck his nose in the soft fall of blond hair at Legolas’ nape, inhaling the wonderful scent of citrus and pines. He had missed doing this those first days when Legolas was still pained greatly by being touched, and now the man took every opportunity he could to do so, since it calmed him greatly. He tried not to let his treacherous mind wander to thoughts of how the Elf would have smelled if he had died, for it had not happened and _would not happen now_ , the Ranger would make sure of it.

He pulled away. Kalin was smiling down at him, having seen the Ranger sniff his Prince, and apparently finding the act sweet rather than disturbing. Aragorn replied softly so not to wake the Wood-Elf sleeping soundly before him, “Then we nightmare much the same, my friend, though most of mine are based on what has happened already. I dream of the horrors through which Greenleaf has survived, and always I am unable to stop them, just as I have been unable to stop them from happening in my waking.”

He hadn’t dreamt of memories tonight, but of something new, though he had no wish to revisit his nightmare by retelling it. Kalin walked back to stand behind Aragorn, crouched down for a moment, laid his hand upon the man’s upper back, and gave a slight squeeze to Aragorn’s shoulder. “I thank Ilúvatar every day he has you, Estel,” the sentry admitted.

Without explaining further or giving the bewildered Aragorn a chance to respond, Kalin stood and walked back to Reana, who waited a short distance away, and thus left Aragorn alone with Legolas and his thoughts. His brothers were at the fire, keeping watch, while Kalin and Reana walked off away from the campsite, likely to spend the late hours together and alone, as lovers were wont to do. Replacing his nose against his lover’s nape, the Ranger inhaled again and let the familiar scent soothe his fear.

_Kalin sneaking off to make love to Reana rather than sit and brood over the condition of his Prince? He must surely be feeling more optimistic about Legolas’ welfare,_ the Adan joked to himself. Honestly, Aragorn was happy for Kalin. The sentry deserved whatever contentment he could find, more so after his nearly fatally disastrous, short-lived relationship with Faelthîr. He found it rather endearing – Reana and Kalin, that was – and so, too, for that matter, did Legolas, who was happy for his sentry to be occupied with something other than his Prince’s well-being.

Over the course of the last week, everyone had refrained from speaking of Elise and of what had occurred. They were all too fearful of Legolas becoming aggrieved over what had transpired during their awful time in the village and the farm. The twins had told Estel privately – that is, without Kalin or Legolas near – of how they still feared the Silvan’s faer was only loosely coupled to his rhaw. The slightest sorrowful memory might force them asunder once again. And this time, without Elise’s imprecation to keep the Wood-Elf’s soul on Arda, Legolas’ faer would go to the afterlife, to Mandos, and there would be no getting him back. Thus, they avoided speaking of anything of import around Legolas, and instead, regaled him with inane memories of old, shared stories and jokes, or kept him occupied with menial tasks they hoped would distract him from revisiting his recent tragedy on his own. For this reason, none of them had yet to hear any details of what had occurred whilst the laegel was an incorporeal spirit, nor of what Elise had done or said while with the Elf. But then, they thought they already knew what had transpired, and still believed Legolas was the one to have killed the villagers and stopped Elise.

Aragorn thought of this as he lay behind the Prince. His curiosity was aggravating, for he wanted to hear how Legolas had ended Elise so he could be certain the girl’s haunt was gone. His heart finally resuming its normal pace, Aragorn tried to push askance these thoughts and go back to sleep, but not aware their human brother was awake, the twins began speaking to each other of the Silvan and Ranger, which piqued his attention. Perhaps it wasn’t polite for him to listen in, but it was hard for him not to do so, since they spoke of him and Legolas. He adjusted his arms where they were wrapped around the Silvan in front of him, careful not to squeeze the Prince too hard nor to wake him, and eavesdropped.

“We’ve only a smidgeon left of the milk of the poppy,” Elladan was telling his twin. Aragorn heard the fire crackle as one of the twins poked at it with a stick. “Tomorrow we should try not to give it to Legolas either in the morning or at night, to begin to wean him off of it. We do not want him to become dependent upon it to ease any persistent soreness.”

“Yes,” Elrohir agreed, which was not surprising, since the twins rarely disagreed. “Luckily, his pain is nearly gone. Or at least, it ought to be entirely treatable with less potent herbs. I think he will feel well enough to travel soon. It is still best for us to get home and get him to Ada as soon as possible.”

Aragorn could not argue against their reasoning. He wished also for them to leave and be in Rivendell as soon as was feasible, and he was glad to hear their supply of poppy had nearly dwindled out, as it would keep Legolas from taking it for any longer. As each day they gave the Prince less and less of it, the Wood-Elf had not once complained, a fact for which they were all glad, as no one wanted to add addiction to the potent poppy tincture to the myriad problems already afflicting the Wood-Elf.

“Greenleaf is able enough to walk around; I believe he could ride for short periods. The true question would be whether it is best to wait until he is able to ride for long periods or if we should leave soon and camp often to give him time to rest. I would rather us not push him, but we cannot wait much longer lest we end up trekking through snow,” the elder twin commented, “as it will only slow us down and risk Estel’s health.”

He nearly got up to join in their conversation, as he had his own opinions and questions on the matter, but again, not wishing to wake Legolas, the Ranger stayed as he was and merely listened. His nightmare had wakened him entirely and it would be a while before he could fall asleep again, anyway.

“I fear Legolas is grieving over having killed the villagers to protect us, and having destroyed Elise,” Aragorn heard Elladan pose. “He hasn’t offered any details, but I’m not sure if that is because we haven’t asked or if he is unwilling to speak of it.”

Burying his nose deeper into his lover’s hair, Estel inhaled the scent deep into his lungs, as one might the fragrant smoke from a pipe, and listened intently as Elrohir agreed, “Yes. But would it be better to wait until we get home or get it out in the open now? No, he hasn’t spoken of it, but as you say, we haven’t pressed him for details, either.”

As the twins now conjectured, Aragorn also felt Legolas’ unspoken disquiet over the topic of Elise and the happenings at the farm. The Prince’s faer and rhaw had been rent, and then rejoined, and how enduring said rejoining would prove to be they could only guess. No; no one wanted to test this union by causing Legolas any sorrow that might undo the slow process of healing between his body and soul – and they were now certain the meshing of his severed faer and rhaw was part if not the entire basis for the Elf’s physical pain. Again, Aragorn considered rising and offering his own view. Personally, his curiosity aside, Estel did not feel it pertinent to know the specifics. Legolas had at least assured them Elise was gone, though he had advanced no further information. Knowing more was not worth risking his Greenleaf’s life.

He was pulled away from his internal pondering when the elder twin suggested, “For that matter, then, if we brought up Elise’s actions, we may as well tempt fate and take Greenleaf to task for his foolishness in trading his life for Estel’s life. I will find it hard not to fuss at him over it. And you know Ada will do so. And should Thranduil find out…”

“Thranduil will beat Greenleaf senseless if he finds out, if not kill him for having the gall nearly to die for Estel,” the younger Noldor despaired. “Kalin is a loyal subject to his King, but I think in order to save Legolas pain and humiliation, Kalin will not offer the information unless asked outright by Thranduil. Legolas, however, will tell his father, and end up bloodied and broken for his honesty. I feel the same as you, muindor. Eventually, we will need to speak to Greenleaf about this unhealthy obsession he feels for Estel. Something must be done about it before it is too late.”

This made up the man’s mind. He began extricating himself from around Legolas, doing so as slowly and carefully as possible, although every fiber of his being now wished to be with his brothers at the fire this moment, arguing with them against their conclusions. Although their conjecture on what Thranduil might do or say was disheartening, it was not this to have roused his ire. _Take him to task for his foolishness?_ His anger sparked, Estel asked himself, _What gives them the right to think it is their place to do so? And what do they mean by saying ‘obsession’ when it is only Legolas’ love to cause him to want to place his life in jeopardy to keep his loved ones safe? Who do they think they are to try to interfere with Greenleaf’s decisions, as if they were Thranduil himself, lording over Legolas like Legolas were an Elfling?_ the Adan chastised. The calm he had worked on reclaiming after his nightmare was evaporating swiftly, and his anxious breathing and rapidly beating heart recommenced. Not yet noticing their brother was awake and attempting to get up without bothering Legolas, the twins continued their private conversation.

“Our Greenleaf has suffered enough from his father, and all this has only made it worse,” the elder Noldo said vaguely, though Aragorn knew his brothers well enough to ascertain exactly of what they spoke, for he had heard this tirade from them before, many months ago. Elladan sighed in an abjectly distraught manner. Unable to see his brothers since he was trying to pull his arm out from under where Legolas’ head was upon it rather than a pillow, Aragorn could still envision the twin’s exact glower when he told his younger twin, “I mean – Legolas literally traded his soul to Elise to save Estel. I fear it is not love between our two foster brothers,” Elladan worried Elrohir, “but some sort of compulsion, some shared madness. What may come next for them?”

“And in the end, it eventuates with the same conclusion, doesn’t it?” Elrohir rued with a similar bleak sigh as had Elladan given. “Estel dies, either of sickness or injury or old age, and our Greenleaf will certainly die with him. What they have has moved beyond love, brother. They are obsessed with each other, I agree. I would that we had been able to stop this before it started.”

The waning sliver of moon from a week ago was now utterly absent from the sky, but even without any natural light by which to see, the Ranger’s vision was lit by the blood-red of his pulsing anger. Infuriated, he finally disentangled himself from the Prince’s body, scrambled away from the Wood-Elf, and clambered to his feet. The adrenaline from the fear of his nightmare had peaked again, though instead of fear, it was now caused by his ample rage. Too caught up in the conversation, or perhaps thinking Estel was merely moving about in his sleep, neither paid attention to the slight crunching of leaves under the man’s feet as he stalked nearly noiselessly towards them; at least, not until he approached behind Elrohir, surprising the elder twin and causing the younger to whirl around in response to his brother’s startlement. Estel moved much more quietly than any regular human, of course, and had been trying hard not to forewarn them of his arrival lest they quiet their vitriolic conversation.

Aragorn did not give any greetings or wait for them to speak. Now noticed, he strode straight to the fire and stopped when he was between where they sat across from each other, their fair complexions sallow in the firelight but their ebony hair glinting in the orange glow from the flames. Estel indicted, “You two speak out of turn and much too freely about things of which you know nothing.”

The faint smiles upon the twins’ faces – smiles of surprised reception mixed with the familiarly gentle, familial ribbing they were prepared to lay upon the man as they had for his entire life – vanished with Aragorn’s irritated statement. Elrohir and Elladan soon shared the same guarded expressions. They had been caught speaking about the Elf and Ranger, but neither of them was prepared to apologize or to take back what they had said, as both Noldor believed they were in the right. Still, after the argument the three brothers had held when first the laegel went unconscious after falling off the farmhouse’s porch, neither twin wanted a recreation of the strained and ugly atmosphere their thoughtless accusations against Estel had made that day.

The younger Noldo held up his hand and closed his eyes, while tilting his head slightly downwards in an unusual demonstration of submission to the Adan’s anger. Elrohir tried first to appease his human brother, saying, “Estel, we know you do not agree with us, but please, let us not argue over it tonight. Already you have woken and heard us. Let us not wake Greenleaf with it. This can wait until we reach home.”

It was much too late for this suggestion, in Estel’s thinking. He had not forgotten nor had he forgiven his brothers’ words to him, their accusations, and the hurt they had caused him recently. Crossing his arms over his chest, he said as much. “No. Let us speak of it now. You began this conversation, didn’t you? I will be here for the finish of it.” Taking a quick and shallow breath, the man charged, “I have had it with your unwanted opinions. Do you not think Greenleaf has suffered enough judgment from his father and people, from the Edain, from Mithfindl? Will you now add your unsolicited views to burden his faer with more worry over how his two closest friends think him a mad fool for loving an insignificant human?”

Elladan rose from his seat, entirely willing to meet the challenge, since Aragorn wasn’t willing to let it go. He paced a bit closer to Aragorn and lowered his voice, though his tone sounded to the Ranger as if Elladan wished he were shouting. He hissed, “Stop this! Do not put words in our mouths. We have explained to you how we feel about your and his bond. Since the beginning, Greenleaf’s faer has been polluted with grief, and from the beginning, he has sought you out for comfort and affection.”

Elrohir stood as had his twin, but adroitly stepped over the small fire to be beside Elladan. “Legolas has never been free of sorrow since the two of you became lovers. You cannot say he has chosen you freely because since he supposedly made this choice to be with you, he has not once been without grief or there has always been some dire situation causing him to cling to you for support and comfort.”

“You said this at the farm. You said then and say again now I am the cause for all of this? You truly believe it?” he asked them with unfeigned incredulousness. He glanced up at the dark sky, where the few and faint stairs visible through the clouds cast off cold and stark, flickering luminosity. They had no answers for him. A couple of days ago, Aragorn had been willing to believe his brothers spoke their criticism from anger. They were angry now, but they were also wholeheartedly serious. The warning clear in his voice, Aragorn murmured, “Do not speak as if I have taken advantage of Legolas.”

His implicit caution to them went unheeded. Elladan stepped closer to Aragorn, his hand out to place upon the man’s shoulder, but Aragorn shrugged it off, for his anger was mounting and he did not desire any farcical comfort from the Noldo. Not dissuaded, the elder twin tried, “Brother, we warned you from the start this would only cause Greenleaf suffering. And it has, Eru help us. I wish we had been wrong. Except for the first time he was attacked in Kane’s shop, everything Legolas has suffered was for you, either to protect you or to stay with you. Even at Kane’s shop, though, he went for you, to buy you tobacco, which while not your fault, is still something he would not have been doing had it not been for you. He endured torture in the forest from Sven and Cort so you wouldn’t be hurt. He lived beyond his grief to stay with you.”

Picking up where his twin left off, Elrohir persisted, “The scar’s voice came to be because you declared your love for him physically, Estel, and do not insult our intelligence by denying it. By your own declaration, _you_ caused Legolas to be beaten by Thranduil, to endure more of his hate, when you awoke within Legolas a desire for a male human, a desire for which he had never before felt until you compelled him to feel it after his torment, when most he needed comfort and affection. And it was you who could not control your temper with Mithfindl. And to take his revenge against you, Mithfindl tortured Greenleaf, whereas he would never have had cause to harm Legolas were it not for your pummeling of him. Can you not see how all this traces back to you, brother?”

Slowly, Aragorn’s arms dropped from the defensive hold he had of them over his heaving chest. As he had been a couple of days before, when first they brought this up, the Ranger was flabbergasted by the depths of their blame for him. He thought now as he had then, though this time, in the calm and cold night, there was no doubt in his mind his brothers spoke the truth and did not speak merely out of fear or anger for either him or the Prince, _For months they have held this grudge against me. All this time I thought they had accepted my and Greenleaf’s love, only for them to admit they hold me accountable for every awful thing done to Legolas._ Having just awoken from a dream where he was losing the Wood-Elf to some unnamable force, unable to save him because of his own limitations as a human, Aragorn found himself seriously considering the possibility of his brothers’ arguments.

Knowing their human sibling well, the twins could see the effect their contentions had upon the man, and not wanting to hurt the human but to make him see sense, they now tempered their choler and refrained from haranguing him further. Elladan once more stepped closer to the Adan, his hand out to lay upon Aragorn’s shoulder, and this time, the human did not move away when the Noldo offered this slight brotherly affection.

“We know you love Greenleaf, Estel. Do not mistake our concern for disbelief of this. And we know he loves you, as well. But can you not see how this entire situation continues to spiral out of control?” the elder asked, while the younger stepped closer to his other brothers such that they were huddled together next to the fire pit, and then added, “Can you not see how we cannot trust your bond with Legolas to be true and fair when it has not been made when our Greenleaf is healthy and of right mind?”

_This is true, isn’t it?_ he asked himself. This wasn’t the first time Aragorn had questioned himself and his actions concerning his and Legolas’ love for each other, but he had never mistrusted it so completely. Looking down at his feet, where embers from the fire were dancing across his boots, blown by the algid breeze portending the coming of a harsh winter, Aragorn speculated, _It can’t be. It can’t be that Legolas would never have loved me had all this misfortune not befallen him… can it? Had he never been attacked in Lake-town, or had we never been attacked on the trade route, would Greenleaf have ever accepted my love? Or did he feel himself so broken and worthless he was willing to throw in his lot with a coinless, futureless mortal man just to experience some affection and love, when he has had so little in his life? Did he think he could do no better than me, since he had been made impure by the merchants – or so he might judge by his and his father’s reasoning, at least – and so accepted my love and feigned his love for me, all to obtain consolation?_

Even considering this shook the Ranger to his core. If any of this were the slightest bit true, Estel could not forgive himself, for in fact, it would mean he had indeed taken advantage of his sweet, artless, and cherished Greenleaf during his time of need. He could not blame Legolas in the least for needing and accepting the physical and emotional solace Aragorn had and still offered, of course, but could easily blame himself for offering it when the Elf had been and still was vulnerable and trying to deal with his torment on his own.

Squeezing his eyes shut against the tears brimming there, which were brought on by the sting of the smoke blowing into them and the smoldering guilt he felt for his actions, Aragorn hardened his voice when he spoke, as he would not have his brothers think they had dispirited him into believing their accusations just yet as he asked, “Then what do you suggest? What would you have me do? What would ameliorate this situation? Would you have me abandon Greenleaf? Would you have me tell him I feel only lust and obsession for him? Would you wish me to tell him what we have cannot possibly be love because his mind was not and is not his own?”

He looked up to his brothers when neither answered him immediately. Surprisingly, neither was looking at him. No, Elladan and Elrohir’s verdigris, wide opened eyes – so much like Elrond’s – were staring over the man’s shoulder. The Ranger quickly spun around, dreading to confirm at whom the twins were looking.

And just as he feared, several feet behind him, with one hand fisted in the cloth over his heart and the other wiping from his cerulean eyes and pale cheeks the telltale trails of his tears, stood Legolas.


	53. Chapter 53

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The good news: I'm posting two chapters tonight. The second chapter will be up in just a moment after a final read. The bad news: the next chapter is the last chapter, and you will not be pleased with it. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Unbeknownst to Aragorn, Legolas had awoken the moment the Ranger tried to remove his embrace from around the Wood-Elf. He had thought the man was merely getting up to relieve himself or get a drink, and because the man’s movements had caused his body’s ache to increase, he had not shown he was awakened because he didn’t want the man to know he had caused Legolas pain. Having heard the twins speaking but not paying attention to what they said, the Prince had lain there for a while longer as Estel rose from their shared bedroll, and gamely, he had kept his silence even after hearing part of the what the twins were disclosing to each other – at least, he stayed out of it until Aragorn joined the conversation and the Elf then heard the twins maligning the Ranger for his part in Legolas’ torment over the last several months. He then grasped the intent behind the twins’ conversation; that is, to force Estel into admitting Legolas was not and had not been in his right mind since first being attacked in Kane’s shop. And in giving in and doing so, the Ranger had just intimated to his brothers, and unknowingly to Legolas, that the Prince could not possibly, truly be in love with the man, since he had not the sanity or wits to make such a decision rationally.

Biting back the moans his actions caused, the Wood-Elf had crawled to his feet. Moving as quietly as he could, which despite his unsteady gait and the pain mere walking caused him was still as quiet as most any other Silvan Elf in the forest, Legolas had managed to skulk right up to the twins and Ranger where they spoke around the fire without alerting any of them until he was right behind the man.

And now, having just heard Aragorn admit Legolas’ love for him was tainted by his grief, having just heard the man ask his brothers if abandoning the laegel would be best, the Prince was beset with both the return of his ever-present grief, which always lingered under the veneer of his being, ready to be tapped by the slightest provocation, and the upswell of an anger he had never before felt for Aragorn, Elladan, or Elrohir. Perhaps when younger, when he and the twins were barely more than Elflings, had Legolas been this upset with the Noldor, but not as adults and not for mature reasons. Never had he felt this angry for Estel. His lividness was overshadowed by his heartache, however, and as Estel turned to look at him, meaning all three brothers now stared at the Prince in realization of Legolas having heard their conversation, the Wood-Elf could not halt his irate, grief-induced tears, try though he wished he could, for they would only affirm to the twins and man how unreasonable and emotional they thought the Prince to be.

Once again, his friends and lover were speaking about him as if he were a child. They spoke of him as some worthless, witless creature who did not know his own mind or his own heart. They did not even trust him to choose for himself how he felt or for whom he felt it. From something Estel had said at the start of the brothers’ conversation, Legolas realized they referred to some argument they had held whilst he was unconscious on the farm, and he would hear it all.

Legolas demanded before any of them could try to pacify him and his tears with their well-meant but meaningless platitudes, “Tell me. Tell me of what you speak. What did you say to Estel a few days ago that has him believing all of this is his fault?”

Having been the ones who said it to their human brother, the twins did not now recoil at repeating their reproach for Estel, though they were not so arrogant as to hide their shame to be retelling it for Legolas. Elrohir began, “Greenleaf, we were upset after you and Kalin fell from the porch. We spoke in anger to Estel, telling him you sold your soul to Elise to save him, and that we believed this to be wrong.”

“You’ve been tormented and abused to save Estel’s life, again and again, whether it was from the merchants or your father, or because you thought Mithfindl was Estel,” the elder twin reiterated to the Wood-Elf, as though Legolas were not well aware of all having happened to him over the course of the last few months.

The Prince stood slightly away from the three brothers, all of whom shared similar disgruntled expressions. The Wood-Elf rebutted firstly to the Noldor, crossing an arm over his moiling belly as he did so, but keeping one hand fisted at his heart to say, “Had either of you been in the same situation as Estel, I would have done all I could to try to save you. Or if Kalin had been the one to be touched by Elise, I would have traded my soul, as you put it, to try to save him. But because I did it for Estel, I am somehow unsound of mind? Do you say this because he is mortal? Do you think his life worth less than one of ours?”

They had easily argued with Aragorn on this matter, but to argue with Legolas over it was an entirely different situation. They could not win this dispute without devastating their Silvan friend. And yet, the twins were too far into their own irritation and had gone too long without venting their opinion to stop. Elrohir and Elladan shifted their necks slightly to glance at each other from the corners of their eyes. In tandem, they then looked at Estel, ere returning their fervid gaze to Legolas. Impatiently, the Woodland Prince awaited their case. He was on the verge of losing his already thin composure. His body hurt, he was tired, he was homesick, and now, he was heartbroken at the evident betrayal of his two closest friends.

“No, we do not say Estel’s life is without worth, but we are not so sure you would have so willingly traded your life for one of ours, brother,” the elder twin questioned uneasily, then interjected before Legolas had the chance to become upset at their questioning his love and loyalty to them, “But we would not want you to, because more importantly, we do not believe you should offer your life for any of us in this way, Greenleaf.”

The younger twin continued almost before his brother finished speaking, doing so on purpose to keep Legolas from being able to respond by saying quickly, “Such an idea ought not to cross your mind at all. Always you have been selfless, but as of late, you are reckless with your life. And it has only been thusly since you have suffered from grief after the events in Lake-town. And it has always been for Estel’s benefit. You act without thought when it comes to him, and never have we seen you be so irrational.”

Before Legolas, Aragorn stood with his arms at his sides, his hands clenching and unclenching, causing his forearms to stand out in sharp relief inside the long sleeves of his thick, woolen tunic, with each compression of his fingers into a fist making the fabric pull taut across his brawny muscles. From how the man looked, the Elf knew Aragorn desired to come to him to solace him and to appease the Silvan’s misery and anger, but from how Legolas looked, Estel knew it would not be wise, for even whilst weeping and ostensibly calm, the Prince appeared murderous to these three brothers who knew him well enough to know the signs of his rage. When no response came from Legolas, the twins again looked to each other. They set about a different tactic to evince their argument, seeing the Prince was not at all swayed.

“Muindor – your love for Estel only came after you were tortured,” Elladan tried to explain, his tone and gentle smile an attempt to mollify Legolas with kindness and reason. Unintentionally, though, Elladan spoke to Legolas as if he were speaking to a hardheaded child, which further enraged the Silvan.

Elrohir went on, complementing his brother’s argument by saying, “Your love for him is tainted by your grief. Before Estel, you never expressed interest in anyone, much less any male human. How can you be sure your love for him is real? How do you know you do not feel this way for him only because of your sorrow?”

Once the younger Noldo said this aloud to the Prince, the twins looked anxious – and rightfully so, for they had finally voiced to Legolas their deepest concern over the issue, which they had never before done directly to the Silvan, even if they had said it to each other and to Estel. They knew their mistake the moment the careless words were laid bare for Legolas, as the Wood-Elf became utterly still after allowing his hands to fall to his sides, with even his chest barely moving to breathe.

“I know. I say it is real. Grief has not turned me into an imbecile,” he all but whispered to his friends. While to the three brothers the Elf appeared as solid as a stone statue, this was only because the Silvan took flawless care to hide the fierce shivers trying to wrack his unsteady frame. The Prince strained to calm himself lest they attribute what he said or how he acted now as only more of the same – of his being overwhelmed with sorrow such that he could not be believed, according to the twins. “Do not treat me as a fool. Do not treat me as my father treats me, as Mithfindl or the human merchants treated me. I thought better of you.”

“Greenleaf – ” Elrohir began in an attempt to diffuse the laegel’s anger. The twins were now fidgeting where they stood, their self-righteous indignation and anger giving way to concern.

Legolas could listen to them no more.

He interrupted, “You cannot blame Estel for the deeds of the human merchants, nor for Mithfindl’s actions. You do a disservice to your brother by heaping the blame upon him!” he suddenly shouted, no longer caring to be quiet in the dead of the night when his fury finally overcame all sadness he felt to be so betrayed by the two Noldor whom he loved as brothers, and now by the human to whom he had tied his faer. Startled severely by the normally calm and quiet Prince’s unexpected turn to shouting, the two Noldor stood with slightly agape mouths, as they had never been yelled at by Legolas before now outside of childish games or arguments.

“And you, Estel,” the laegel railed, turning his wrath upon the man, who had yet to speak since the Prince came to the fire. “You do not even defend yourself, much less me. I take it you agree with Elrohir and Elladan? Do you now believe I do not have the presence of mind to know whether I love you or not?”

Though Aragorn opened his mouth to argue, his struggling visage showed his true feelings on the matter, or so Legolas gathered, and thus no words were needed. Legolas interjected, staving off the man’s paltry attempt to explain with a violent wave of his hand, “If you agree with them, then you must regret confessing your love for me. Or, as you now call it, your obsession. Or was it merely your lust?”

“That is not fair,” the Adan snarled. He moved away from his brothers and towards Legolas, but the Wood-Elf stumbled back out of the way. Surprised by his lover’s evasion, the Adan stopped midstride, his ire forgotten, and his hurt to be evaded roused, instead. “Greenleaf,” the man reproved softly at Legolas’ avoidance, though to Legolas, Aragorn had no right to do so after what he had said to the twins.

In the valley, when last he had felt this angry, his sentries had tied him to a bed, believing him to have become incorrigible and likely to hurt himself. He ought not to have felt such a fear now, but the thought crossed his mind that since his friends believed him to be an obsessed, mad, and idiotic fool, they might have no qualms with restraining him in their wrongheaded belief it would ensure his safety or well-being – just as had his sentries done with their Prince’s best interests at heart.

So upset was Legolas growing and so much was his pain swelling, Legolas was finding it increasingly harder to stand. The fact that his chest was consumed with the agony of grief did not help matters, as it kept him from taking a deep breath, and his vision began darkening, as he could not find enough air. His faer now connected to Legolas’ in a way more like how two of the Eldar’s faers would be joined, Estel felt his lover’s sorrow quite clearly, which caused his own chest to ache, but which also worried him immensely. Legolas did not know it, but this was the very ordeal the three brothers had sought to spare the Elf from experiencing until they reached Rivendell and had Elrond’s advice on the matter of how to ensure the Prince’s faer and rhaw were firmly attached.

As Eldar and having known the Silvan for almost their entire lives, the twins didn’t need to be connected to the Prince’s faer to know he suffered. As one, Elladan and Elrohir tried to come around the fire and closer to Legolas, although the Wood-Elf backed away with each step closer they came, just as he had done with Estel, until the identical brothers halted lest they cause the Prince to harm himself by stumbling and falling. However, Legolas kept walking backwards, intending to be free of the pitying, disappointed stares his friends gave him, and seeing this, the Ranger strode forward, intending to grab for the fraught Wood-Elf just in case the Silvan decided to break free of them and go into the woods, where he would be impossible to find should he choose to hide.

Luckily for the brothers, but also for Legolas, who might have taken to violence had Aragorn grabbed him, Kalin and Reana came sprinting into the clearing just then, for as they had been on their return to the campsite, they had heard Legolas shouting and come running. Although Reana ran to the fire pit, where her Lord’s three sons stood, Kalin went immediately to his charge. He laid his hands lightly upon the younger Silvan’s shoulders from behind, thus stopping the Prince from walking backwards any farther, but also steadying him before he fell.

“Legolas?” his sentry asked simply. Kalin moved to stand in front of the laegel to gain his full attention. When his Prince barely looked at him but kept his gaze upon the three brothers staring at him as though his actions now proved their belief in his incredibility, Kalin took hold of the younger Silvan’s arms and shook them. The pain this caused made Legolas gasp; at once, the elder Silvan apologized, saying as he let go of the younger Silvan, “Sweet Maker, my Prince, I am sorry. But what on Arda is happening? We heard you shouting. Are you well?”

His mind raced with what to do. The thought of staying here amongst these three whom he thought to be his closest friends – well, he could not bear it. He did not want to look upon them any longer, nor hear their distrust of his every thought and decision. He was likely about to prove them right with his command to Kalin, but at this point, Legolas did not care if they thought him irrational. For his own sanity, he decided what was best, and straightening his hunched over shoulders and yanking his arms out of the elder Wood-Elf’s hold, Legolas told Kalin, “We are leaving for home. Immediately, my friend. Prepare your things.”

Legolas turned on heel, stumbled towards where his bag sat by a tree, and grabbed it before he staggered towards Arato, by whom he sat the satchel. Most of his things were packed already, save for his bedroll, so he dropped down to his aching knees and began rolling it up messily.

“Kalin,” Elladan implored of the sentry. Legolas did not look at the others. He closed his eyes in anticipation of his sentry siding with the Noldor and Ranger; if Kalin did this, Legolas would leave without him. But from the sounds his fellow Wood-Elf was making, Legolas hoped Kalin was doing as asked in arranging to leave. The elder Noldo begged, “Kalin, please. Talk sense into him.”

“He cannot leave,” the younger Noldo continued. “Talk to him, Kalin. Make him see reason.”

The Prince wasn’t sure how much of the conversation his sentry had heard before he interrupted, but apparently, he had heard enough or didn’t require to have heard any of it to side with his Prince, for Kalin had no qualms with his Prince’s decree when it was clear the Noldorin Elves and the Adan Ranger had upset his charge grievously. Showing he respected Legolas’ decision, or he at least had the respect not to question it in front of the three brothers who had earned his Prince’s wrath for having questioned the young Wood-Elf’s good sense, Kalin firmly but not unkindly told the twins, “My Prince wishes to leave, so leave we will.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Legolas, this is madness. You are not well enough to ride!” Elladan exclaimed so loudly he startled some of the horses, causing them to skitter and nicker at the perceived threat. He startled Aragorn, as well, who jumped at the sudden breaking of the awkward silence having fallen over the campsite after Kalin’s assertion he and his Prince would be going.

Aragorn remained near to his brothers, flabbergasted by Legolas’ reaction. _He cannot travel just yet,_ he told himself, agreeing with Elladan and looking to his twin Elven foster brothers for their aid in convincing Legolas to remain for now. However, it then struck Estel how his lover had not said he wanted to go, but to _go home,_ which meant the Silvan likely did not just want to be on his way, but to leave the company of the Noldor and Ranger, to go to Mirkwood. Elladan and Elrohir were not paying Aragorn any attention, but looking at each other, their eyes and faces disseminating information between them without words.

Not yet having given up on convincing Kalin, Elrohir told the sentry, who had finished saddling Arato and now saddled his own horse, “Kalin. Are you willing to risk your Prince’s life on this poor decision he is making because of a tantrum?”

This, at least, caught Kalin’s attention. The sentry whirled around, his eyes wide in disbelief of Elrohir having claimed Legolas was acting so poorly. Kalin looked to his Prince, perhaps to gauge whether it would be wise to engage the Noldor in an argument, and seeing Legolas bent over his bedroll, his hand once more fisted at his chest, Kalin decided not to argue for his charge’s sake. However, he did warn the brothers, his voice low and dangerous, “Take care how you speak of my Prince.”

_Do they think to antagonize Legolas and Kalin into staying?_ he wondered of his brothers, while also wondering if they had lost their wits, themselves, as they claimed of Legolas. Aragorn could not fathom what to do to ameliorate the situation, save for getting the Prince alone to speak with him.

Having finished saddling their mounts, Kalin grabbed his bags and his own bedroll and tossed them close to the horses. So upset was Legolas, Aragorn noted, the Silvan was having difficulty in the simple task of rolling his bedroll. The sentry took over this chore from his charge without explanation or commenting upon Legolas’ shaking hands. Yet, the sentry asked his Prince quietly, although obviously not so quietly the rest of them could not hear, “My Prince. I am ready when you are. You want to go home? To Mirkwood, you mean?”

Having asked just what the human wanted to know, Kalin patiently anticipated his Prince’s answer, clearly ready to leave for Eryn Galen if it was Legolas’ wish. Estel found himself rooted to the ground, unable to speak or move or so much as argue just now, while he awaited Legolas’ answer.

The laegel sat on his heels, one hand upon his chest, forcefully clutching the tunic above his heart, and the other fisted in the cloth over his thigh – the very same thigh where the scar had once lain, though no trace of it remained now after vilya’s work upon it. Abruptly, a new and very worrisome thought occurred to the man, who considered, _Does he hear its voice now? Has my and the twins’ arguing caused it to resurface?_ What Elladan and Elrohir had conjectured, their accusations to Estel, and his compliance to their anger and suppositions, were all the very kinds of judgments the maleficent mar used to vociferate to the Wood-Elf. If he and his brothers had awoken the fell voice inside Legolas, Aragorn would first thrash his brothers, and then fall to his knees before Legolas and beseech the Elf’s forgiveness. He prayed absently, _Please do not have let it returned._

“Yes,” the younger Silvan told his elder quietly, though again, everyone heard when Legolas confirmed to Kalin, “I wish to go to the Greenwood. I want to be home, in my own rooms, amongst our own people, with Ada. We will need to make haste to reach the High Pass before it becomes too dangerous from snowfall.”

Nodding at his Prince, Kalin stood with the last of Legolas’ belongings and his now secured bedroll in hand, which he walked to Arato and tied to the stallion’s saddle, ere he did the same with his own possessions on his own mount, which was one from the village. Again, Estel turned to his brothers, expecting more from them than this sudden silence they were intent upon prolonging. It was unlike them to give up so easily. They did not ignore him this time, but shook their heads at him in tandem, for they were currently just as bewildered as was he, and could not think of what to do.

_They would let him go? They would let him leave us, travelling only with Kalin, while he is still suffering physically and likely grieving because of us, and perhaps now hearing his sorrow’s judgment again?_

Legolas pushed himself into a crouch and then tried to stand; he fell forward, though, and while he caught himself before falling flat onto his face, his staggering ended Aragorn’s inability to move or speak. The Adan rushed to where the Prince was once more trying to climb to his feet, but before he could grab the younger Wood-Elf to haul him to his feet, Kalin was there. He gave the Ranger an apologetic grimace and did as Aragorn had been about to do by aiding the Prince into standing. _At least Kalin doesn’t wish to run me through,_ he decided, for he had worried Kalin might keep him away from the younger Wood-Elf, given his anger for the twins right now.

“Greenleaf,” Elrohir intoned gloomily. The twins moved closer, having followed Estel, who was now standing just behind Kalin and Legolas. Neither Silvan turned around but both stood still to listen as Elrohir tried, “If you wish to leave, we will leave, but let us go to Imladris. Let us take you to your Minyatar.”

“He will want to see you, to ascertain you are well. Besides,” Elladan rationalized, his and Elrohir’s acerbity now absent, as they seemed to have taken to entreating Legolas, “as you say, you would need to make haste to get to the High Pass before it is impassable, but you cannot ride so hard, as you are, in pain and misery. And it is dangerous enough to travel the Pass during the colder season, but even more so just you and Kalin.”

The Woodland Prince straightened his stooped over shoulders; with Kalin’s hand upon his forearm, perhaps to keep the laegel stable, Legolas turned around to face the twins. “Kalin and I have traversed the High Pass in winter before. We will be fine,” he argued politely, dismissing the twins’ concern as one would a stranger offering benign interest for another’s health and good travel.

“You would go home so soon? When your father learns what has happened here, he will visit his anger upon you – undeservedly so,” the younger twin started; the elder twin finished, “Your father will break your spirit with his anger, muindor. At least come home with us until you are well enough to withstand your father’s judgment.”

Legolas laughed without humor. Aragorn had never before heard his lover laugh in such a way; it was dark and low, self-deprecating and hateful. The Prince’s butter colored hair was coming undone from its braids; a section of it hung over the Wood-Elf’s forehead. The Ranger longed to reach up and push it behind the laegel’s ear. He refrained, though, and listened sadly when the Elf told them with another odd laugh, “My father’s judgment? He will only say what you two have said, what Estel now believes. He will be pleased to know he was right all along, and to know you three agree with him.”

Kalin listened to all this, his gaze flitting between twin and twin and Prince. The elder Silvan had not heard all of the conversation prior to his and Reana’s arrival, but he could well guess what the twins and Ranger must’ve said to upset his charge, especially if Legolas claimed the Elvenking’s opinion coincided with that of the twins. While Kalin did not waver or question Legolas’ decision, he did ask Legolas, “My Prince, I will ride with you into the Dark Lord’s lair, if you ask it of me, but are you certain you are well enough to ride tonight? Perhaps we can wait until morning, at least, so you may rest a few more hours. And Reana and I had planned to prepare more smoked venison tomorrow,” the sentry suggested worriedly, as the Silvan would not have enough stored foodstuffs to last until Mirkwood, and while they could hunt for game, Kalin did not wish to depend upon this to keep his Prince nourished. His pale face scowling at the twins even as he admitted their need of the Noldor’s knowledge of medicines, he then asked of Legolas, “And what of the medicines you are taking? I know nothing of herbs, as you well know. I would not have you suffer needlessly while we travel home.”

The twins did not allow Legolas to answer his sentry’s query and seized upon Kalin’s concerns immediately, for they found it a viable avenue by which to convince the Prince to remain. To Estel’s aggravation, however, they went about it the wrong way, and he could have trounced Elladan over his head when the elder Noldo defiantly rebuked Legolas, “That is right, Greenleaf. Without us, you will have no medicines for your pain. For how long do you think you can suffer through it, especially since you foolishly think you must ride off in the middle of the night after too little rest today?”

“You will be fed the oliphaunt’s share, I’m sure, as Kalin will starve himself before he let you go hungry, but have you not thought of what you two will eat while travelling? Even if you take all the venison you and Estel prepared while here two weeks ago, it will not last you until Eryn Galen, brother,” the younger twin added to his twin’s argument. Both identical siblings stood similarly with their arms crossed over their chest, their sanctimonious faces in the shadows, since the fire was at their backs.

_Keep your mouths shut,_ he thought to his Elven brothers, while wishing he had the courage to say it aloud. The last thing he needed was for Legolas’ pride to be further wounded by the twins contesting the Silvan’s abilities as a woodsman or a warrior, as such a challenge would be met with obstinacy. His need to get the Prince away from everyone else to speak to him was overpowering, but first, he would need to find a way to ensure Legolas would agree to speak to him – or if nothing else, to ensure Kalin wouldn’t lop Estel’s head off should he need to force the younger Wood-Elf away from his protective sentry.

As Aragorn expected, Legolas looked away from Arato, at whom he had been staring as he deliberated, so he could glare at the twin Noldor. Since the Prince faced the fire, no shadows hid his dangerous demeanor; normally, the laegel’s eyes held laughter, warmth, and friendliness, but right now, they glinted like icicles in a cold winter’s sun. They looked like Thranduil’s eyes.

Legolas’ sharp mind worked quickly. Aragorn could see the machinations behind his lover’s algid gaze. He told the twins, “Keep the venison and all the other food. We Silvan have been surviving off the forests for ages. Kalin and I will not starve.” He walked off towards Arato, who as usual became excited at the approach of his beloved master, while Kalin followed his Prince. It was to his sentry the Wood-Elf addressed the other issue brought up, telling the elder Elf quietly, “Any pain I may still feel is only of my rhaw. Worse is the pain my faer will suffer to stay here to listen to my supposed friends’ judgment and doubt of me. I would rather my body suffer without their tinctures than willingly torment my soul by remaining.”

While not said in anger, Legolas’ words struck the three brothers as if he had condemned and shouted at them all the same, for his quiet acceptance of the twins’ dare showed his seriousness in going, while his candid admission of the heartache his friends were causing him dampened the brothers’ spite even as it evinced their ignominy in their treatment of the already careworn Silvan Elf. The sentry nodded to his Prince and began the last of the preparations for their departure. He removed the satchel with the venison inside – the very same leather satchel Legolas had made weeks ago while he and Estel stayed in this very glen, happily together and able to show their love for each other without fear of reprisal or condemnation for the first time since coming together – and set it at the twins’ feet. As it was, the Silvan Elves would have only their weapons, their horses, and their waterskins. While Aragorn did not doubt the Wood-Elves could indeed scavenge and persist upon the bounty of the forest, he was not yet done arguing against his lover’s going, for he had yet to be given a chance to speak to the laegel.

Aragorn could not withstand it any longer. He turned to his brothers, his wrath for them as great as ever he had felt for the twins. Indeed, Estel could not recall having ever been so angry with his brothers. They had caused this mess and had failed in fixing it. He felt in this moment as if he were being forced to choose between Elladan and Elrohir or Legolas; his choice was easy, though, and he made it abundantly clear when he warned the Noldor, “I have heard enough of your idiocy. You are driving Greenleaf away. And for what? To prove you are right about something of which you know nothing! Go away or be quiet!” he shouted, his hand searching his hip for where the hilt of his broadsword ought to have been, had he been wearing it. He would not have used it upon his brothers, of course, but his reaching for it was instinctual.

Much how they had when earlier Legolas had yelled at them, the twins’ eyes grew wide in tandem, for although they had experienced Aragorn’s anger before, the two brothers caught the undercurrent of what the Ranger was saying, and of course, they saw him reach for his missing weapon. He did not wait to listen to their response. Estel bounded forward to the Prince, who was reaching for the pommel to Arato’s saddle, his sentry behind him to boost the younger Elf up and onto his horse. Taking the Wood-Elf by the upper arm, he pulled at the already unsteady laegel. When Legolas stumbled away from Arato and nearly fell against the human, Kalin instantly came forward, as well, to chastise the man for his poor treatment of his Prince and perhaps to threaten the Adan to mind his manners, but the Ranger turned his incensed scowl upon Kalin now, which to the Eldar around him was as vehemently stately as ever they had seen the displaced King of Gondor and Chieftain of the Dúnedain appear. The elder Wood-Elf faltered in his steps, just as he would have had the Elvenking given him such a regal glare.

“Let go of me,” Legolas asked civilly, sounding very much as if he were asking for the platter of meat to be passed his way down the table. He looked down to where the Adan’s hand clutched his upper arm and reiterated, “Release me, Estel. Kalin and I are leaving.”

“No. No, you are not leaving. You are coming with me,” he ordered the Silvan.

By his hold of the Elf’s arm, he began pulling the Prince away from Arato and towards the shore of the lake, leaving two stunned Noldor and a temporarily stunned Silvan to watch them in indecision, with the former wondering what their human brother planned and the latter wondering if he should interfere on his Prince’s behalf. When Legolas again stumbled, Kalin walked forward, his surprise turning to ire, which was quickly mounting into what would prove to be violence should he feel Aragorn was mistreating his charge; however, Estel steadied the Wood-Elf and took a deep breath.

_Be careful,_ he advised himself as he saw Kalin stride forward, his hand upon the dagger at his waist.

The sentry would slit Estel’s throat to protect his charge, the man well knew, since it had nearly happened to him weeks ago, when Kalin thought the Ranger was the one to have tormented his Prince. He did not want to give Kalin cause to think Legolas was in peril around him. Placatingly, pleadingly, he held a hand up to Kalin to stop his approach, which the Silvan did though he watched the two in preparation to hamper Aragorn should Legolas show any sign of distress.

Aragorn looked at Legolas, who did not return his gaze. Grabbing hold of the Elf’s chin, he forced the Prince into looking up at him. When Legolas finally looked at the man, he did so with disappointment and hurt buried in the icy depths of his blue eyes. Seeing this eliminated the man’s anger altogether – irritation and ire that had not been for Legolas anyway, but for the Ranger’s brothers.

_Take more care,_ he chastised himself.

Glancing back at Reana, who was still standing near the fire in utter confusion, and then to his brothers and Kalin, he inhaled deeply again to clear his mind of the rage he felt for his foster brothers. He would deal with them later.

“Please,” the Adan pled. Having released the Elf’s chin, he crouched slightly so he could look up into the Wood-Elf’s downturned face. “Please, Greenleaf. Come with me for a moment. Let us talk. I wish to show you something, as well. More importantly, I wish to speak to you without my idiot brothers influencing our conversation.”

Legolas shook his head but said nothing. Estel heard a harrumph and then a sigh of aggravation from the twins, who did not appreciate their human sibling’s insult; then, he stood upright hurriedly when he heard the crackling of friable leaves under someone’s foot and caught sight of Kalin treading towards them again, likely to remove his Prince from Aragorn’s hold since his Prince had just intimated he did not want to go with the Ranger.

“Greenleaf,” he whispered into the Elf’s ear. The laegel’s face was once more turned down, giving Estel nothing but a view of the crown of the Wood-Elf’s fair head. He felt awful for doing this, but he needed Legolas’ compliance, and so guilted the harried Silvan, “If you truly love me, Greenleaf, you will give me the chance to speak to you, to explain.”

After a moment of silent contemplation, silence held by all in the clearing except Arato, who was tossing his head about and nickering as his master was seemingly leaving him after preparing to ride him, Legolas then nodded without looking up to Estel. He murmured in agreement, “Fine, but quickly. I wish to leave shortly.”

_You are going nowhere,_ he promised himself, though he did not dare to say it aloud lest he end up challenging the Prince as had his brothers done. _You are going nowhere without me, at least. Like Kalin, I will ride with you to the ends of creation, if I must, pleading with you the whole way to ignore my idiot brothers and believe me, instead._ Some of the tension in the clearing was relieved just then, for the sentry now knew his Prince wished to go with Estel, the twins were hopeful their human sibling would be able to convince Legolas to stay, and still bewildered about what was occurring, Reana seemed glad to be given the chance to speak to Kalin to find out what was amiss, for she had left the fire and stood beside the Silvan, now, where she hugged Kalin’s arm to her breast in comfort.

“This won’t take any longer than necessary,” he promised the Wood-Elf vaguely and offered his arm to Legolas.

To his relieved surprise, Legolas looped his own arm through the Adan’s at the elbow, and not sparing their companions another thought, Estel began to lead his Greenleaf away from the others while trailing along the lake’s shore into the dark of the night.


	54. Chapter 54

“Are you able to walk a little farther?” the man asked the Elf.

Legolas nodded. Truly, his legs were beginning to hurt him and his head was aching fiercely, but he did not want to show this weakness to the Ranger, and so he walked on, his arm still looped with Estel’s arm. They had brought no torch and with no moon, there was no natural light by which to see, but the Ranger had better vision than most men, and of course, as an Elf, Legolas could see even better than could Aragorn, so they endured no trouble while walking. A long while later and nearly halfway around the lake, where neither could see the fire at the campsite, Aragorn stopped.

Legolas looked around them. Aragorn had said he wanted to show the Elf something, but there was nothing unusual about where they stood, as far as he could tell. And for some reason, Estel only stared down at the ground. If the man had said he had something to show him only as a ruse, Legolas would not be surprised, but he _would_ be annoyed at having been forced to walk this far for no reason – especially if the Adan did not soon start talking.

“This is it. This is the place where Kalin and I chose to bury you,” Aragorn told the laegel. “This is where we dug your grave.”

In surprise, Legolas looked more closely at the ground in front of them. He hadn’t noticed the now filled in burial plot because after filling it back in, Reana and Kalin had covered it with grass and sticks. Before he thought better of what he was saying and trying to instill some levity in the dismal conversation doomed to occur, Legolas replied jestingly, “I am sorry you went through the trouble and did not have the chance to put your hard work to use.”

A wild animal might have stood beside him just then, so ferally did the Ranger growl. He loosened his arm from Legolas’ arm and grabbed the Elf’s elbows, instead, which he used to whirl the Prince around forcefully. This nearly caused Legolas to fall to his knees, but he was saved by the tight grip the Ranger had of him. “Do not speak as such!” Estel demanded harshly, shaking the Wood-Elf by his hold of him, as he ranted, “Your death is no laughing matter!”

He tried to yank his arms out of the man’s hold, but did not try too hard lest he cause himself to fall. “Let go of me, Estel,” he asked of the human.

Aragorn looked down to where he held a bruising grip upon the laegel’s limbs, then hung his head and sighed, while releasing the Elf. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t, but I am tired of being bossed and moved around like a ragdoll, both by you and your brothers.” His complaint carried an undercurrent the Ranger recognized, and again, the man made to apologize, but Legolas forefended this by stepping away from Estel. He ambled back to what would have been his grave and looked down at it. He stepped gingerly on the loose soil. It had been packed in tightly and did not give way under the Elf’s light step and slight weight. He trod across it to the beech tree under which the grave laid; the young beech was devoid of all leaves this time of year, but Legolas could hear the tree’s lifesong, which was strong and steady, telling him the young beech was healthy. He smiled, his heart strangely lightened by this sight, for it would have been a fine place to lay his body, which he then told the Ranger, “You two chose excellently.”

“Kalin and I agreed we would wrap you in a blanket, so the soil wouldn’t get you dirty, knowing how you love to be clean,” the subdued human told his Elven lover. Legolas turned around to look at Estel as he spoke. “Kalin said he wished we could take you to the sea, so we could lay your body in the waves and let you swim for all of eternity, since that is what you love to do most.”

His smile grew. As morbid as the conversation was, Legolas was pleased to hear this, as it showed his sentry and Ranger knew him well. _Or perhaps not,_ he amended when his thoughts returned to what the twins had accused Estel of, and how the man had taken this blame willingly, while also admitting the possibility of their being right of Legolas not truly loving the human because his mind was unsound. His smile faded from his face.

“What did you wish to say?” he asked the Adan. Walking over his grave and back to Aragorn’s side, the Wood-Elf now looked out across the lake, where the dim, scintillating light of the stars was reflected upon the lake’s dark surface as if it were a mirror of the sky above them.

Rubbing at his bearded face, Estel asked the Silvan in an abrupt change of topic, “Does it sorrow you to have killed those villagers, to have ended Elise?”

Legolas did not wish to speak of this and he was startled this was of what the man wished to talk to him. The twins and human had feared to ask the laegel for details out of fear his faer would not be able to handle the grief doing so might bring about; so too did Legolas dread this. He knew he was not well. He did not wish to die of sorrow. As any Silvan Elf might wish, Legolas wanted to die with his long knife or bow in hand, while fighting for the good of his kith or his loved ones. When Estel stepped forward so he could watch the Elf’s face as he answered, Legolas responded by turning away, back towards his grave.

“I didn’t kill them,” he found himself telling the human, who was ostensibly shocked by this knowledge. One dark brow lifting in unknowing imitation of his foster father, Aragorn silently inquired as to what the Elf meant. Legolas dug the toe of his boot into the soft dirt of the unused grave. “The villagers. I didn’t kill them. Or end Elise, either. I heard you all speaking of my having saved your lives, but you are wrong. I have not felt like correcting your misunderstanding,” he admitted, though he left out why this was so, as he was certain the Ranger knew already.

Estel ran the palm of his hand over his mouth, which hung slightly agape with astonishment. If Legolas hadn’t killed the men, then there was only one other specter who could have done it, and Aragorn drew this conclusion to ask, “Then Elise killed them? Why?”

He was much too tired to tell his entire story but he wanted for the human to know, and as he was convinced about leaving the Noldor and Ranger behind while he and Kalin went on their way, Legolas decided to tell his tale in hopes of pacifying the man into accepting the Prince would not be grieving when he went his way without him. The Wood-Elf exhaled loudly, reached out for Estel, and using the man’s forearm for balance, lowered himself to his knees. He sat on the edge of the freshly turned dirt of his grave, but not upon it, with his legs folded before him, and told his lover, “To protect you and the others. As for why she wanted to protect all of you, she only desired to do so because she cared for me and didn’t want for me to be sad.”

A second after Legolas was settled, Aragorn followed suit in sitting beside the Elf. All good humor from before was now absent from the laegel. He was exhausted, his pain was stifled though not gone, and luckily, it was still not as bad as it had been days before; and now, distraught over this conversation, Legolas wiped at his burning eyes when the tears began to form there. They sat in silence for a few moments, with Estel waiting for clarification and the Wood-Elf unwilling to give it.

“What happened, Greenleaf?” the man asked reluctantly, but curiously, once he realized no more information would be forthcoming without his provoking. Aragorn scooted upon his rear until he sat facing the Silvan, such that they were both seated with crossed legs, knee to knee, and neither could hide their visage from the other. “You were dead, were you not? Kalin and my brothers swore it to be so.”

“Yes, I died. After I spoke to Kalin, telling him my goodbyes, I fell into nothingness. When next I was aware of anything at all, I was watching the fires the men had set to the house and barn, though I was confused and not yet aware I was dead. Eventually, I found myself looking at my own body, which is when I truly realized what had happened.”

Legolas absently palpated the muscles of his thigh, which were aching more than the rest of him. He did not recognize this was the thigh upon which the scar had once laid, but Estel did, and so when the worried man’s hand slithered over the Elf’s hand, twisting his thick, callused digits with the Prince’s long fingers, Legolas did not comprehend why the man kept him from massaging his leg and wanted to pull out of Estel’s grasp. He did not want comfort from Estel right now, as he was still furious with the human, even if he was currently calm and willing to talk. In the end, though, he accepted this affection, for he sorely needed it for the courage to continue. Aragorn held Legolas’ hand between both of his own and waited expectantly.

“Elise showed up at the farm. Or maybe she was there the whole time I watched the fires. I do not know. I do not even know for how long I watched the fires, feeling the desire to walk into them, to end my faer’s unnatural stay here upon Arda after my death. Elise brought me here, to the lake. One moment we stood near to my own body, and the next we were standing by this lake, near to the campsite. It was amazing, but frightening, as well, to have travelled so quickly. We spoke for a while, with her telling me stories of her life, and I braided her hair like mine to please her,” he wistfully told Aragorn. The human leant forward and peered into the Elf’s face, though for what he looked, Legolas did not know, but the inspection unnerved him. He looked away, in the direction from which they had walked, and Estel sat back upright, while his hold of Legolas’ hand grew tighter. “She eventually admitted how she lied to me. She earlier promised me you would be well and she could reverse the curse upon you, but while here, Elise told me she did not know how to see it done. I grew angry with her and shouted at her, and then made her take me back to the farm so I could ascertain all of you were well.”

The muscle of his thigh was jumping and twitching. He used his free hand to try to soothe its ache, only for this hand to be caught, as well, and trapped with his other between the man’s hands. Intending to ask the human why he was doing this, the Elf had not the chance when Aragorn prodded, “I am not surprised she lied. She was desperate for you to befriend her, wasn’t she?”

He forgot his purpose of inquiring about Aragorn’s strange actions and instead nodded, continuing by telling the human, “I was determined to help all of you when the villagers attacked, but Elise stopped me. She didn’t want to lose me to the light from the torches the men held; and yet, because I would not be dissuaded from coming to your aid, she protected you on my behalf. She didn’t seem to take pleasure in killing them, but nor did she have qualms about it. And I watched, helpless to stop any of it,” he murmured. The ache in his chest was growing exponentially. It felt like someone had strapped a belt about his chest and was pulling it ever tighter, while the man’s hands upon his own grew tighter in tandem, for Aragorn could feel Legolas’ mounting sorrow. He fought the urge to pull a hand free from Estel’s so he could rub at his tender chest with it. “Well, except Randric,” he went on with a short, mean-spirited chuckle. “She took pleasure in killing him for what he said about me and her Uncle Wendt.”

“Randric deserved no less. Had not she done it, Kalin and I would have fought over who had the privilege to kill that jackass,” the Ranger admitted with his own bitter, small laugh. “Besides being the one who roused all the villagers into their ill planned riot, Randric’s insults against you and Wendt were enough for me to wish him dead.”

They sat in silence for a few more moments. Estel had begun to manipulate the Elf’s hands in his own, rubbing them as if warming them, while he waited for more of the story. There was really only one part left to tell. After the awful argument he had witnessed between the twins and their human brother, Legolas did not want to tell the rest of what had transpired, as it would only give the man more reason to believe the twins were right and the Wood-Elf a cretinous, sorrowed fool.

But in the end, he finished, for he knew Aragorn would not let him leave until the story was told. “When the fight was over, when you began dying from her imprecation, I felt what you were feeling. She told me I was breaking my promise to her – I was trying to leave her. I told her she had already broken her promise to me by not saving you as oathed. I would have had no choice. Watching you die was the worst moment of my life,” he whispered to the man. He could not speak more loudly than this susurrus; truly, he did not wish to speak these words aloud at all. And honestly, he did not have accurate words to describe what he had felt while watching his beloved Ranger’s body begin to fail as his faer absconded from his rhaw. “What the merchants did to me, what Mithfindl did to me. The years I have lived under my father’s abuse and hatred. All of it was nothing in comparison to watching you suffer, knowing you would soon die. My faer would have faded, whether I willed it to or not. I wanted to linger only in the hopes of seeing you as a specter before you were gone, at least, since I did not have the chance to say goodbye to you while I lived. Elise could feel it happening. She knew I would not be able to remain with her.”

“But you did not end her. She ended herself?” the human encouraged again when the Elf grew quiet, his gaze once more upon his grave.

“She had shown me what happened when she died, how a splinter became stuck in her finger, and I told her the splinter was what was keeping her soul from moving on to the afterlife. She didn’t even know whether what she intended to try would work or not. She thanked me for being her friend and then began dragging her own body into the bonfire. I watched her do it. She wanted to make me happy by giving you the chance to live. She was selfish for all those weeks in her killing of her kith to appease her loneliness, even if just for a nighttime’s worth of companionship, but upon finally finding a friend in me,” he told the man quietly, while gazing down at Aragorn’s hands pleasantly chafing his own hands, “she acted selflessly to try to save you, and thus perchance save me.”

He did not protest when Aragorn lifted his hands to the man’s mouth, where he pressed Legolas’ knuckles against his chin and mouth. The humid warmth of Estel’s breath upon his flesh caused the Prince to realize just how cold his flesh had become while sitting here speaking of this.

“The twins are right,” Estel said in voice muffled by the Silvan’s skin, while his lips moved against Legolas’ knuckles in mimicry of kisses as he spoke, “you traded your soul for mine, Greenleaf. You should not have done it.”

Legolas yanked his hands out of the Adan’s hold and twisted them in his lap. He considered rising from the ground and moving away from the Ranger, but the hurt look upon the man’s face stopped him. “So you do agree with them. You think I am a reckless fool?”

“Yes,” the Adan responded at once. Perhaps sensing the laegel’s desire to flee his nearness, Aragorn reached out and laid his hands upon the Elf’s bent knees now, which he held lightly, mindful of the pain he might cause due to the Prince’s affliction of hypersensitivity. “You are a reckless fool. As am I, though, for I would have done the same for you, meleth nin, and without a second thought, if I believed it would save your life. I cannot fault you for that, although it frightens me, Greenleaf.”

Legolas’ voice grew hard, as did his features, when he spoke next. He knew to what the man alluded, and he would have it all out in the open before he and Kalin left. Shifting his legs out from under the man’s hands, Legolas pulled his legs under him, instead, and sat upon his heels in preparation to stand and leave. “It is not because of the grief I have experienced or the comfort you offer so willingly. It is not because I have no other choice. It is not to spite my father. I love you, Estel. If you do not believe this to be true tell me now, and we will part ways with the truth of it. I would give you the chance to be happy with someone whom you believe loves you as much as you love them. I will not hold you to your promises to stay beside me, nor guilt you into returning my love and affection, if you do not feel it honest.”

His silver eyes blown wide and his lips parted and working to form words he could not seem to say aloud, Estel sat speechless. After listening to all the Elf had told him, the man likely needed a moment to absorb all this information, but Legolas was not yet done.

He continued to the human, “I agree with one thing, though, in that Elrohir and Elladan are not entirely wrong, nor are you. I have never put anyone so far above myself by putting myself in such danger for them – unless one counts the fealty I feel for my King and our people. But I have never loved anyone as I have loved you, Estel. If you do not believe by my words and actions that this is true, please,” he asked of the man again, “then tell me now, and I will leave you be.”

Aragorn did not need to be told that for the man to repudiate the Elf’s love, it would end the Elf’s tenuous hold of his life by severing the fragile connection between his recently recoupled faer and rhaw. Legolas did not need to be told that the man would not lie to Legolas to keep this from happening – not now, not after all through which they had endured together, not even if it saved the Elf’s life. Before him, the Adan sighed heavily ere he took a deep breath. The man once again captured the Elf’s hands in his, entwining their fingers, and then brought them up to his mouth, where he kissed each of the Prince’s knuckles in turn.

“Do not ever leave me be, Greenleaf.” Estel bowed forward and now pressed his forehead to Legolas’ knuckles, doing so fiercely, such that it hurt the Elf’s hands and must have hurt Aragorn’s forehead. “I love you. I know you love me. I do not want for you to leave. I do not want to be parted, ever.”

An immense tension slowly began to leak from the laegel’s body, which he had not been aware of, and he rested his cheek against the top of the human’s head. Yet, foreboding thrummed through his aching body, carried along with each heartbeat like it was carried in the blood rushing in his veins. Estel was not finished explaining himself. Legolas could all but hear the ‘however’ in the man’s tone of voice.

Thus, Legolas was unsurprised when Aragorn finished, saying, “However, the twins have shown me how I am the cause of all your suffering, Greenleaf. They are right of this. I have brought you nothing but excruciation, grief, and humiliation. Mithfindl, Cort and Sven, Kane while in your father’s halls, and even the wrath your father bestowed upon you – I am the reason you have nearly died, been tormented, beaten, and…” the man trailed off, not eager to say aloud any reminder of how the Prince was despoilt by the men or Mithfindl. “We cannot continue like this, not if it means watching you continue to suffer.”

Lifting his cheek from atop the man’s head, which prompted Aragorn to raise said head to look at the Prince, Legolas’ heart faltered and skipped, his will to endure broken, his sorrow as great as ever it was, and the fell opinion of the scar not nearly as vicious as the reprimanding abhorrence running rampant through him just then. And yet, he smiled at Estel in a vain attempt to hide the effect the human’s words had upon him, pulled his hands free from Aragorn’s hold of them yet again, and sat back upon his heels. Aragorn watched him closely, perhaps expecting for Legolas to close his eyes and die in that moment, or to weep and shake, or perhaps even to rant and yell at the man. But the Prince would do none of these things.

He would wait until he and Kalin were on their way home to die from sorrow.

“If this is what you wish, I will not deny you it. Kalin and I will leave immediately.” Legolas scooted back a bit so Aragorn was not in the way as the Elf tried to stumble to his feet.

Due to the Ranger’s hands, which shot out to catch the Elf by his forearms, Legolas was dragged back into kneeling on the ground. A grunt of both pain and annoyance escaped the Prince before he could stifle it. He had just told the man he was tired of being heaved around and yet Aragorn had done just that once more. Intending to chastise the human, Legolas pulled his arms free – or he tried to, but Estel would not release him easily this time.

Estel was angry. The Adan kept his hands upon the Wood-Elf as he climbed to his own knees, such that each of them now sat upon their heels, facing each other once again. “That is not what I am saying, Greenleaf, and you well know it,” the Ranger admonished, his voice near to a yell when he continued, “After all we have been through, after all we both have suffered because of our love for each other, do you think I am willing to give up so easily?”

He was confused. Had not the man just said he did not want to continue? Estel had thought the Elf ‘well knew it,’ but at seeing Legolas’ confusion, the Adan must have realized Legolas did not know at all what the human meant.

Leaning forward until his forehead was pressed against the Elf’s forehead, Aragorn let go of the Prince’s arms to place a hand on either side of the laegel’s face, his thumbs playing along Legolas’ high cheekbones. “Greenleaf,” he bemoaned plaintively, “I do not want you to leave. I want for you to be safe and happy. And I do not want you to suffer on my behalf. Ever again. I want us to find a way to work this out. And Ilúvatar damn what the twins think about it.”

He wanted to resist the Ranger’s hold upon him. He wanted to pull away from Estel, to maintain his anger, and leave with Kalin. Legolas could do none of these things. He had never been good at telling Estel no.

Legolas had been holding his own hands at his sides, clenched into fists to keep from touching the human, but when the meaning of the Ranger’s declaration hit him, the Elf finally allowed himself to slide his arms around Aragorn’s neck. “Then you do not doubt my love for you?” he felt compelled to ask. “Or do you believe as your brothers do that I do not know my own heart and mind?”

In the scant space between their mouths, it seemed stale and muggy as they fought over the same air to breathe. Estel leant forward the slightest bit, which pressed his lips against the Elf’s lips. They lingered like this for some time, not quite embracing, not quite kissing, and not quite understanding each other.

“You are no fool. And I do not doubt you,” the man said when he pulled away from the Elf. He did not move far, however, and once these words were uttered, Legolas used his hold around the Ranger’s neck to incite the man into leaning forward again. “I love you, Greenleaf.”

He smiled. The twins could keep their doubts – he and Estel had none. “I love you, Estel.”

This time, there was no hesitation, no distance between them, and they understood each other perfectly. Legolas claimed the man’s mouth thoroughly, not releasing Estel’s lips as he stood upon his knees, which he then walked upon to straddle the Ranger’s legs. He sat upon Aragorn’s bent lower limbs, pressing as much of himself as he could against the human. With his oversensitive senses, every nerve in his body was alight with pleasure from this simple buss. From only this kiss and the proximity of his love’s body, Legolas found his own body at the verge of his peak, as if he and Estel had been making love rather than sharing a single kiss. His shaft strained against the front of his trousers, while underneath him, Aragorn – who was nigh insatiable – showed little signs of arousal.

 “Are you still leaving tonight?” the human asked him, nuzzling with his nose the spot where the laegel’s jaw met his ear.

“No,” he sighed, a frisson running up his back. “But tomorrow. Tomorrow we will leave for Imladris,” he conceded.

Aragorn’s relief to hear this was palpable. The Ranger began placing soft kisses to the underside of the Elf’s jaw and along his throat, until he once more met the Elf’s lips with his own. _It must be the aftereffects of the rejoining of my faer and rhaw,_ he decided, thinking if they did not soon stop, he would end up making a mess of himself. And in fact, when the man’s wandering hands stroked down the laegel’s back, lighting upon the soft swell of the Prince’s rear, Legolas groaned unabashedly into Aragorn’s mouth, breaking their kiss.

“I wish we were alone. I could show you how much I love you,” the Adan teased as he looked up into the Elf’s face, his roving hands causing the Silvan to shiver with pleasure heightened from the unusual affliction to his body.

They were alone right now, but Legolas had the feeling if they tarried too long, someone would come looking for them. It was with this thought and his strangely uninhibited, rampant desire in mind that he decided, _I should send Estel back to the camp to take care of this._

“As do I, but for now, do me a favor. Go back to the camp,” he told the man, climbing off him and carefully hiding his arousal. The last thing he wanted was for Aragorn to see how roused he was, lest the human offer to aid him in taking care of it – as tempting an idea as that might be. Smiling, his flushed face showing no signs of sorrow or disquiet, Legolas explained, “Tell Kalin I will return soon, so he does not worry. I merely wish to be alone to think for a short while. And to gather myself before I must face your brothers,” he added.

Aragorn did not want to leave, this much was clear. A frown settled over the man’s striking features and he rubbed at his whiskered chin, considering arguing with the Wood-Elf. Perchance thinking to argue would be to question his lover’s good sense, which he had just assured the Elf he believed was not faulty due to grief, Estel smiled, climbed to his feet, and nodded. “I will tell Kalin. Don’t tarry out here too long in thinking, meleth nin.”

Before he left, though, Aragorn leant down to the kneeling Elf and pressed a chaste kiss to his forehead. They had more of which to speak. They needed to reconcile the twins’ opinion. Moreover, Legolas would need to return to the camp and deal with the Noldorin brothers. He watched the man walk along the shore, choosing his steps carefully so not to trip in the dark of the night, not realizing it would be the last time he saw the human this night and for many nights after. Legolas absentmindedly stuck his hand in the turned soil of his unused grave and contemplated what to do next; soon, the choice was taken from him.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He took his time in walking back to the campsite. Indeed, he walked incredibly slowly, barely ambling along, such that he considered Legolas might soon overtake him on his own return to the campsite. Frankly, though, Aragorn was not eager to face his brothers, nor hear more of their judgment or complaints. Taking a deep breath, he stopped for a moment to admire the rippling of the lake, while knowing he was putting off the inevitable.

 _At least I can take them the good news that Greenleaf will be travelling with us back to Imladris, although it will be a difficult journey if he and the twins, and I and the twins, do not settle their differences,_ he mused.

The light from the fire was soon visible once the man rounded a grouping of bushes at the edge of the lake. Pacing near to his and the Prince’s saddled horses was Kalin, who strode to Aragorn the moment he came into view. Seeing his Prince was not with the Adan, the sentry insisted, “Where is he?”

Estel held his hand up and soothed the Wood-Elf, “He is fine, Kalin. He wanted only to be alone for a time. He promised to return soon, and said to tell you not to worry.”

Aragorn tried to bypass the sentry, but Kalin stepped in front of him. Harried, pale, and on the verge of panic, though the Ranger could not understand why, Kalin asked again, “Where is he?”

His heart began thrashing in his chest, feeling very much like Wendt were inside his torso, pounding away as if his heart were an anvil, for the sentry’s anxiety was contagious. “He is near the beech tree where we had planned to bury him, my friend.”

At once, the sentry took off along the shore at a near sprint. He watched the sentry go for a moment, telling himself Kalin was merely being overprotective, and looked around the campsite. His brothers and Reana were at the fire, passing around a small flask of something – likely wine or brandy – in silence. Not wanting to speak to his brothers, but not wanting to postpone the argument they were sure to have, Aragorn strode to the fire and settled opposite of Reana, while Elladan and Elrohir sat opposite of each other, as if the four were each a side of a square.

“How is the Prince?” the Elleth asked Estel as he sat.

Politely, the man answered, “Better now.”

Neither of his brothers spoke to him. Elladan and Elrohir stared into the flames of the low fire, moving only when the flask was passed to him. When it came back to Elrohir’s turn to sip from the flask, after doing so he passed it on to Estel without looking at the human, who took it and sniffed the opening. _Whisky,_ he recognized. It was unlikely one of the Elves had brought this with them, so he assumed it must have come from the stores of the village and been left behind by Halbarad, Jakob, or Tomas when they divvied out the foodstuffs upon his fellow Rangers’ parting. Taking a healthy swig of the fiery liquid, Estel then passed it beside him to Elladan.

While his brothers did not seem concerned to know of Legolas, Estel knew it was a sham. They were not only interested, they were worried beyond measure about their Woodland friend, but feeling somewhat spiteful, as his brothers were the cause of the problem, Aragorn held his tongue. If they wanted to know of Legolas, they would need to ask him or wait for the Wood-Elf’s return.

 _We can leave tomorrow, since Greenleaf is still eager to be somewhere he considers home. And with good travel time, and allowing time for respite for Legolas’ lingering pain, it may take only two weeks before we reach Imladris._ Warmth from the whisky began to spread throughout his body, loosening his tensed muscles and easing his wayward thoughts. The flask had gone around the fire another time before the man thought, _Shouldn’t Kalin have returned with Greenleaf by now? But maybe they are just off talking somewhere._

After the fourth time the flask had gone around the fire, Aragorn actively began to watch for Legolas and Kalin’s return. And now empty, the flask was tossed to the side, while everyone contemplated the flames in silence still – except for Estel, who recalled Kalin’s anxiety and started to worry the sentry had some basis for his earlier anxiety.

 _That’s it, I am leaving to find them,_ he told himself, standing from his seat beside the fire and commencing to walk in the direction from where he had come, where Kalin had gone, and where he had last seen Legolas.

He stopped when a fair head became visible over the top of the tall bushes at the shore. He breathed out in relief, glad for Kalin and Legolas to have returned, but when he saw only the one fair head, the Ranger’s tired heart resumed its galloping, for that fair head was moving quickly, and when Kalin ran frantically out from behind the bushes, the human knew at once something  very foul had happened to his Elven lover.

The sentry ran straight to Estel, whom he grabbed by the shoulders roughly. “At the grave. You said he was at the grave.”

The confused, stunned Ranger nodded. At this point, the twins and Reana had heard and sensed the Wood-Elf’s panic, and came up behind the human to listen. “He said he would just be a moment. He wanted to be alone for a moment,” he explained again to the Silvan as he had before Kalin left earlier to find the Prince.

Releasing the Ranger abruptly, which knocked the man back a step, Kalin ran to where the horses were, which is from where he grabbed his bow and quiver. The Wood-Elf was set to run off again, back from where he had come, and might have, had not Reana called out after him, “Kalin! What is it? Where is the Prince?”

Kalin paused only long enough to shake his head and tell them, his blue eyes desperate with fear, “He is gone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it. Took me forever to finish this story, didn't it? That's all folks. Hope you enjoyed! :)


	55. Temp note to readers

Temporary chapter, as promised, to let you know that the new story's first chapter is up. 

 

http://archiveofourown.org/works/8674630/chapters/19886425

 


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